Snapchat Ads: Should You Be Advertising on Snapchat?

With every hot new social media platform, we get new questions from clients about whether there are good advertising opportunities associated with it. We’ve talked about Facebook and Twitter ads before, but Snapchat is suddenly on the radar of a new demographic after its recent IPO. (If you have teenage sons or daughters, they almost certainly knew about it long before that!). So should you be using Snapchat ads as part of your marketing strategy?

(If you still know nothing about Snapchat, this funny little video will give you the basics):

The video also reveals a little about why we don’t think Snapchat ads are a great option for most of our clients. Yes, it is a very popular app. And yes, your kids likely use it several times a day. But since it is still primarily used by millennials, Snapchat ads don’t have a great reach to a larger market.

Since Snapchat ads are still so new, they are also unproven. We have yet to see many great success stories from businesses doing advertising with them.

Lastly, since Snapchat is video/visual-based, you have to have the means to do very heavily produced, professional video advertisements. Their ad policy states that all advertising videos “must be of the highest quality and meet the highest editorial standards.” This means shooting a quick video on your iPhone isn’t going to cut it!

Ultimately, Snapchat ads are probably only a good bet for B2C companies that have a young customer base and a big ad budget. Our advice for most B2B business is that social media ads are of very limited use (an exception might be LinkedIn because of its professional focus).

Whether or not you go the social media ad route, we can help you craft the perfect marketing campaign for your business. Contact Niki at [email protected] to learn more.