How to Create An Effective Snap Ad with Snapchat Ad Manager
Snap Ads are full-screen vertical video ads that can be up to 10 seconds long.
Snapchat users (or Snapchatters) can swipe up, anytime when the video ad is playing, to do the following:
- watch a longer video
- read an article
- install an app, or
- visit a website
Snap Ads appear in between friends’ stories and Snapchat curated content such as Snapchat’s stories or publishers’ stories.
In the past, if you wanted to run Snap Ads, you would need to go through one of their ads partners. Now, though, you can create Snap Ads yourself through Snapchat’s new self-serve ads tool, Snapchat Ad Manager.
Below, you’ll learn how to create a Snap Ad and evaluate its performance using the Snapchat Ad Manager in this section.
Feel free to set up your business account on Snapchat here, log in to your Snapchat Ad Manager here, and follow along!
(This is a shorter version of the original blog post. If you would like to read the full blog post, you can find it here.)
Snap Ads Structure
Snap Ads use the same structure as Facebook ads — campaign, ad sets, and ads. To create a Snap Ad, you’ll work your way down the structure: create a campaign, an ad set, and then the ad.
If you haven’t created a Snap Ad before, a pop-up will prompt you to create a campaign once you log into your Snapchat Ad Manager. You can also click on “+New Campaign” to get started.
1. Choose an objective for your campaign
First, decide what you want Snapchatters to do when they see your Snap ad.
You have four options:
- Drive traffic to your website
- Drive install of your app
- Grow awareness
- Drive video views
Then, set a schedule for your campaign. You can either start the campaign immediately and run indefinitely or define the start and end dates. You also have the option to set the status (active or paused).
Finally, name your ad campaign.
2. Set the audience, budget, and schedule of your ad set
First, name your ad set according to your naming convention.
Then, there are three main sections to fill up for your ad set — Audience, Budget & Goals, and Schedule.
Audience
The “Audience” section contains five main parts that allow you to specify the audience you want to reach:
- Geography
- Demographics
- Audiences
- Placements
- Devices
While you are only required to select a country at the minimum, setting more specific target audience will help you achieve better results.
Here are some targeting best practices from Snapchat:
- Keep your audience size less than 20 million people for the same creative
- Create an ad set for each unique group of people you’re trying to reach
- Test Lookalike Audience for prospecting and finding new customers
- Try using multiple ads per ad set so you can see how different creatives perform with the same audience
Budget and Goals
The “Budget & Goals” section allows you to state your daily budget, goal, and bid amount.
The minimum amount for the daily budget seems to be $100. Any lower and you won’t be able to click “Next”.
The delivery of your ads will be optimized for the goal and the bid amount you specified. But you will be charged based on the number of times your ad is served.
It is recommended that you set the bid amount to how much each goal action (e.g. app install) is worth to you. If you are not getting the results you want, you could try increasing your bid.
Schedule
The “Schedule” section allows you to set the schedule for that particular ad set (which is different from the ad campaign’s schedule in the previous step).
As you can run multiple ad sets within each ad campaign, the ad sets can have a shorter schedule than their ad campaign.
3. Select an ad type and upload a creative
Now you’re ready to create you Snap Ad.
First, you’ll need to select your ad type:
Fill in the basic information (such as the creative name) and select the ad type you what.
There are four ad types available on Snapchat at the moment:
- Top Snap only
- Web view
- App install
- Long-form video
Upload or create your content
There are a few tiny details to complete before uploading or creating your ad creative.
- Brand name
- Headline
- Call to action
“Media File” is the vertical video you want to use for your Snap Ad. If you have created it already or prefer to use a third-party software to create it, simply hit “Upload” to add it to your ad.
If you are not sure how to create vertical videos, simply hit “Create” and you’ll be brought to Snap Publisher, Snapchat’s online video editing app.
You can either create a video from scratch here or edit one of the nicely-designed templates.
As for the content of your Snap Ad, selfie videos are a great option to start your ad, according to Liam Copeland, Director of Decision Science for Movement Strategy.
The trick is to film videos on iPhones using the front facing camera with the talent front and center — and with no branding until three to five seconds in, according to Copeland.
“The more organic the ad feels and the later the branding appears, the more likely a user is to swipe up to view long-form content or web content,” he said.
For more tips on creating great Snap Ads, check out Snapchat’s Help Center where they listed the specifications and offered advice for each ad type. Here are just some of the best practices listed there:
- Use voiceover call to actions to encourage swipe up
- Three to five seconds is the sweet spot for Snap Ad length to drive action
- Provide an offer message, if available, by second two or three
The final step of Snap Ad creation is to fill up or upload your attachment — the website, app page, or video that you want Snapchatters to see when they swipe up.
4. Run campaign
Click “Launch Campaign” and your ad campaign is ready!
If you have been following along, you have just set up your first Snap Ad campaign.
Congratulations!
5. Monitor, optimize, and report
After you have launched your ad campaign, you might want to monitor its performance, edit the schedule or budget, or report your results.
Monitor your ad performance
The dashboard will display your overall and individual campaigns’ ad metrics. You can drill down to each campaign, ad set, or ad by clicking on its name and see the metrics for specific date range by updating the date selector.
The default ad metrics shown will change according to the objective of the campaign. You can customize the metric columns of the table by clicking on “Customize Columns” in the upper-right corner of the table.
Edit your ad schedule or budget
When you are viewing a campaign or ad set, an “Edit” button will appear in the upper-right corner of the page. Snapchat allows you to edit a few details of your campaign or ad set.
Report your ad results
If you would like to report your ad results, you can click the download button beside “Customize Columns” to get a CSV file of the table you are viewing.
There’s also an option to break down your results by day, week, or month so that you can see how the ad has performed over time.
Bonus: Snapchat has a dashboard right within the Snapchat app for you to monitor your ad metrics on the go. You can find it in your settings menu.
Have you tried Snapchat Ad Manager?
If you have tried the Snapchat Ad Manager, it’ll be great to hear about your experiences.
If you are up for sharing any tips, that’ll be awesome!
The full version of this blog post was written by Alfred Lua and first published on the Buffer Social blog on July 25, 2017.
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