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Win with Snapchat ads: the secret to running a successful campaign

As an advertiser working in the era of short videos, you shouldn’t miss any social media platform that allows you to take advantage of this format and use it to promote your products.

Snapchat made its breakthrough as the platform that engages mostly younger users. But having in mind that this platform has recently partnered with Amazon for virtual try-on in the app, it is clear that Snapchat stepping its game up when it comes to business opportunities.

Wondering how to unlock the potential of Snapchat advertising and be efficient while doing so?

Learn the secrets of how to advertise on Snapchat and get ready for winning with Snapchat ads.

What kind of audience can you expect on Snap?

Snapchat ads

Snapchat is the app that holds millennials' and Gen Z’s attention.

Focusing on the United States, 48% of users are aged 15-25, while those ages 26-36 are 30% of users.

The audience on Snapchat is used to consuming fun and easy vertical video-formated content. Snapchat keeps its audience engaged, giving them the opportunity to create unique content with filters available for everyone.
Snapchat users are introduced to AR Lenses, which give a new dimension to their experience with this social media platform.

Which brands need to be on Snapchat?

As a performance marketer, you know that highlighting the benefits of launching a campaign on a new social platform is essential to convincing a client to do so.

If the brand you’re working with targets Gen Z and Millennials, using Snapchat ads will be beneficial for communicating the right message. If the brand is looking for a big breakthrough - Snapchat can be a great platform for brand awareness campaign.

Snapchat is mostly oriented toward e-commerce. Brands in the fashion industry can benefit greatly from Snapchat’s AR experience and Snap’s catalogs. This goes for almost every retail brand. Cosmetics retailers can benefit from virtual try-ons or custom filters with their products.

Since Snapchat is a highly visual platform focused on video formats, brands that are selling experiences such as travel can leverage this platform to showcase their offers.

How to advertise on Snapchat - general rules

Snapchat has its own Ads Manager that you can use to create ads, launch and optimize campaigns, and monitor their performance. Although is not as robust as Facebook’s targeting tools, Snapchat has its own targeting.

You can target your audience on Snap based on their demographics, locations, behaviors, and both online and offline interests. Also, you can plug your own data from a third-party platform.

Snapchat ads will appear on full screen, squeezed between organic content. How the actual ad will look depends on the type of ad you choose.

Here are the types of Snapchat ads you’ll need to choose from:

  • Single image or video: this type of ad appears as organic content, and it is a great choice for brand awareness campaigns.
  • Collection ads: these ads are adjusted for e-commerce businesses. To run this type of ads you’ll need to have a product catalog which will be uploaded to Snap’s Ads Manager. These ads are showcasing the product and can be both image and video formatted.
  • Dynamic collection ads: These ads allow dynamic product ads to be automatically created and synchronized with the product catalog.
  • Story ads: video or image ads that appear in series. You can create between 3 to 20 story ads in a sequence that will mimic the experience of tapping through a friend’s Snap story.
  • Commercial ads: these ads appear in stories, without the option to skip them. They can be standard (up to 6 seconds entirely unskippable), and extended (up to 3 minutes, where only the first 6 seconds is unskippable)
  • AR lenses and filter ads: you can create lens ads thanks to Lens Builder on Snap, and these ads are sponsored filters, which can be both used on front and back-facing cameras. Lenses can track the user's face or surroundings in real-time. Filter ads are static overlays that can be location or audience-based.

How to stand out with your Snapchat ads?

When advertising on Snapchat the most important thing is visual appearance. That’s why Snapchat offers different templates to help businesses without an in-house design team.

If you want to make an impact with Snapchat ads that will require producing visually appealing creatives that will catch your audience’s attention. To do so,  you can leverage Snapchat tools, making sure that each of the creatives you produce represents both product and the brand.

Standing out on Snap means sparkling the curiosity of your audience by going the extra mile with your creatives. To step your game up you won’t need to spend extra time working or to scale your design team. You’ll need the right technology to leverage.

Elevate Snapchat advertising with Hunch

Use the Hunch platform to create DPA catalogs and build creative assets for Snapchat.

What does the process look like?

If you are familiar with Facebook DPA, you will use Snap’s DPA seamlessly. Hunch made a unified process that works for both Facebook and Snapchat.

Connect your product feed to the Hunch platform and set up a dynamic ads catalog. Create a custom on-brand template for different product designs with dynamic data elements coming from the feed.


Once you have your template prepared, Hunch will translate the design and dynamic data to Snapchat. Once creatives are on Snap, Hunch continues refreshing the data feed allowing it to stay live and be updated in the catalog.

That’s how you get relevant ads you can manage effortlessly using a single platform.

If you want to discuss your case further, jump on a call, and let’s create great Snapchat ads together!