Arena

Snapchat Ads

Paid Social Media

While many may be unfamiliar with this platform, it’s estimated that Snapchat has over 100 million active users, and about 50% of those are under the age of 25. Snapchat is definitely a platform that’s catered to that young audience with an emphasis on photo and video sharing with friends. The platform also has short- and long-form content, usually around pop culture or sports, from publishers like NBC News, People, and iHeart Radio. Snapchat Ads allows you to serve a variety of different types of content, like static graphics and videos to users watching their friends’ Snap Stories (similar to Instagram Stories), shorter non-skippable commercials for users viewing longer-form video content, multi-frame Story ads, and targeted filters or augmented reality lenses that users might use on a selfie sent to a friend.

Skill Level Needed to Buy Ads

Newbie Friendly

Typically Managed By

Communications & Digital Staff, Ad Agencies

Resources

Who Is It For

Campaigns and organizations looking to expand their media mix, especially with a younger audience.

Use Cases

A campaign with a small digital budget might use Snapchat ads to increase awareness about when and how to vote with a young audience.
A campaign with a mid-sized digital budget might run short, non-skippable commercials to increase their candidate’s name ID with young voters.
A campaign with a large digital budget might use augmented reality lenses and filters to inspire users to share their intent to vote with their friends.

Strengths

CPMs are considerably cheaper than most other ad platforms
Ad setup user interface is similar to Facebook’s, making it fairly easy to adapt to
Numerous ad formats give advertisers many ways to engage with their audience
Snap ads are typically viewed in between video stories from friends, creating an ad environment where the viewer is more attentive

Drawbacks

Long review times for political ads (each ad goes through manual review)
Heavy scrutiny of ad content, not just what you’re saying but how you’re saying it
Because younger audiences often don’t engage with ads, it can be harder to move your audience to action on Snap
No pre-built political affiliation behavioral audiences
Can only match lists through email, phone, or mobile ID with one identifier at a time

US Political Ad Policies

Snapchat’s political ad policy covers “election-related ads, advocacy ads, and issue ads.” When setting up an ad account, advertisers must select an option that says you’ll be using the account for political ads. Snapchat requires advertisers to include a “paid for by” disclaimer on their ads and fill in a “paid for by” disclosure in the ad setup flow.

Snapchat also reserves the right to scrutinize the content of political ads. They openly discourage negative advertising and specifically disallow ads with “attacks relating to a candidate’s personal life.” They have also historically taken issue with voting ads that lean heavily on social pressure.

In order to access U.S. Congressional Political district targeting, you must have Snapchat’s ads support team whitelist your account.

All political ad spending is publicly available in Snap’s Political Ads Library.

Common Goals

Awareness
Persuasion
Mobilization

Available Creative Formats

Videos (6s, 15s, 30s, 60s, 60s+)
Static Graphics
Gifs
Platform-specific creatives (ie: Story Ads, Filters/Augmented Reality (AR) Lenses)

Average Costs

Typical pricing model: CPM

$2.50-16+ CPM

Notable Targeting Capablities

Demographic targeting
Geotargeting
Behavioral targeting
Retargeting
Custom list audience
Lookalike audience

The Digital Ads Playbook is produced by ACRONYM+ and powered by Arena.

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Paid for by Arena Summit, a section 501(c)(4) organization, and Arena PAC.

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Arena

Arena

Snapchat Ads

Skill Level Needed to Buy Ads

Typically Managed By

Resources

Who Is It For

Use Cases

Strengths

Drawbacks

US Political Ad Policies

Common Goals

Available Creative Formats

Average Costs

Notable Targeting Capablities

We need your support.

Thanks for checking out our paid media assessment.

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