Who can benefit from Snapchat Ads (with examples)

Until recently, Facebook and Instagram were holding the top positions among the social media platforms brands preferred to advertise on. Now, Snapchat is gaining positions, especially after big brands such as Domino’s, McDonald's, Visa, etc., launched their successful campaigns on this platform. Together with TikTok, they turned the former top duet into a quartet, and who knows, maybe the distribution of forces will turn upside down very soon. In any case, we are here today to discuss the ghost-icon app and its perspectives for advertising, as well as give some recommendations on who can benefit from launching ads on Snapchat more than others.

If your business is aimed at the young, modern audience, and your advertisement consists predominantly of visual content, Snapchat Ads would be a great choice to start using. Snapchat has different ad options available to its clients; Snap Ads, Snap Stories, and AR Lenses are the most popular and used. Snapchat Ads for business are great because they cover a massive spectrum of ad goals, from increasing brand awareness to directly growing conversions. 

In terms of settings, Snapchat is pretty flexible. For instance, it is possible to set up the location, demographics, interests, age, and even behavior when it comes to targeting. Moreover, AR lenses allow businesses to take one step further in advertising and create engaging and interactive experiences for the viewers. Last, but not least important, is its functionality to track ad performance and provide insight into the campaign's success. This information usually serves as the basis for further campaign planning and budgeting. Describing Snapchat Ads in 3 words, it would be creativity, innovation, and youth.

The main benefit of Snapchat Ads for every business is that they primarily interact with the younger audience. People aged 18-24 make up almost half of all the Snapchat users (on Facebook, for example, the dominant age group is 25-34), which means that if your product is aimed at a younger audience, this social media platform would be an ideal place for advertisement. Apart from the audience, Snapchat has many other great things and features that attract more and more advertisers every year.

1. Engaging ad formats. Snapchat developers understand their audience perfectly, which is why they created new and engaging ad formats in addition to more ordinary Story Ads and Snap Ads. AR Lenses allow users to interact with the advertised products virtually. AR Filters are more static but can still engage the audience by adding additional elements to the picture.
2. Real-time performance tracking. Observe and follow such metrics as CTR, CPA, Impressions, and Conversion Rates in real time, optimize your campaigns immediately when you see any changes, and do everything you can to maximize your ROI on the spot.
3. Cost effectiveness and loyalty to clients. As Snapchat’s audience is highly engaged, the prices are more than affordable and can be adjusted for businesses with low budgets.

In addition to all the benefits listed above, you may find something special and unique for your area or business that would make Snapchat even more attractive.

We have already mentioned the types of Snapchat Ads, and we have another article with a detailed description of each, so here we will accomplish an unusual challenge: describe each of them, reveal its essence, in 3 words.

There are no limitations on what type of ads you can use for what projects. It depends only on you, your decisions, and your proficiency in the area. If the budget allows and you think it might be useful, feel free to use all of them.

One of the most popular reasons for any advertising campaign is to sell something, so it should not be surprising that we will discuss Snapchat Ads for eCommerce first today. Generally, if you know that your product will interest a young audience and engage them to buy, it is hard to find a platform better than Snapchat. Youth have a different mentality and an easier attitude toward money, which is why they are much faster and more flexible in making decisions about buying something.

A great example of how Snapchat Ads for eCommerce businesses can work is the case of Prada. In 2021, they decided to experiment with Snapchat’s AR Lenses and introduced the first-ever “Bag Try-On Lens”. The idea was very simple - the users were given a chance to try the famous Galleria bag in augmented reality. The Snapchat audience was not only excited about the implementation of new technologies, but also enjoyed the opportunity to see how the famous brand’s apparel would look on them without buying the piece and even leaving their house.

This cooperation spread to other bag models and gained some additional features, such as changing the bag’s colour using simple gestures, which boosted the brand awareness and audience engagement even more.

Restaurants nowadays suffer a lot from delivery services and review platforms. A restaurant is not only a place to eat for younger people; it's an authentic experience, a show, a museum, and an activity for an evening. One way to engage more people and attract their attention to “food institutions” is to run Snapchat Ads for restaurants.

In 2024, Wendy’s launched a Sponsored Snap campaign. Platform users got a video message in their DMs with an engaging caption, “Saw this and thought of you <3”. This campaign found an immediate response from the audience and resulted in 52 million impressions in one day. This number set an all-time record for the US advertising market. The whole campaign resulted in a 54% increase in organic followers of the official brand’s page on the platform and a 17% increase in brand awareness. These numbers clearly demonstrate how effective restaurant advertisements on Snapchat can be.

Regarding mobile applications, Snapchat is an excellent platform for increasing the number of app installs and promoting new features. As the main platform audience is younger and more eager to try new apps and services, Snapchat ads for apps feel quite natural there. AR Lenses, Filters, and other types of engaging interaction with the users help to increase the title visibility and user acquisition even more.

Headspace, a meditation and mindfulness app, decided to capitalize on Gen Z’s interest in such matters and launched a campaign to increase app downloads in 2024. The idea of the campaign was simple: they prepared simple videos promoting mindfulness exercises and sprinkled them with some AR Lenses. This interactive experience resonated with the users and rewarded the company with a massive increase in app installs.

Big businesses have also found Snapchat quite useful for promoting their products among the younger audience. The main thing that attracts them, except for this, is the interactive and creative ad formats. Whatever your product is, you can give people an opportunity to try it, check how it looks on you, and establish a personal connection with it. Each of these points increases the chances that a person will purchase it.

However, the main aspect is the ability to create lookalike audiences thanks to Snapchat’s advanced targeting settings. Consider the people’s interests, location, views, etc., to understand who is more likely to get interested in your product, and focus all your efforts on them.

A good example comes to mind immediately. In 2024, Adidas started promoting the new line of sneakers on the platform with the help of AR Lenses. The fact that users were able to try the fresh models virtually not only boosted the impressions but also significantly increased the number of sales for the new collection. To be more specific, the increase was 35%, and the number of interactions with the AR Lens went over 1 million views, which is an incredible number.

If you think social media platforms are only good for promoting and selling goods and services, your views are outdated. In the second quarter of the 21st century, Snapchat is used by politicians and candidates to communicate with potential voters and raise awareness about important issues they focus on. Moreover, it is essential to attract more people to vote and take part in the political life of their country, and Snapchat fits this goal the best among other platforms. Only in Europe has the number of young voters increased dramatically over the last decade, and it is important not to lose this momentum.

Snapchat ads for politicians are great in allowing them to set up who they want to convey their message to: people of a certain age or living in a particular area. Add to this modern technology all the engagement tools the platform has, the number of people visiting it, and the domino effect, and you will get a tremendous impact. It is too early to talk about this now, but soon, a person using Snapchat Ads for a county council race (for example) will almost always win over the one who does not, simply because they would have the Gen Z votes on their side.

A good example of how politicians can use Snapchat to get votes and supporters is the campaign launched by the American Democratic Party for the 2024 presidential elections (as we all know, they lost it, but the rates were extremely close). Young people on Snapchat could use the AR Lens created specifically for this campaign to put the “Biden-Harris 2024” sticker on their avatars and spread their views over the platform. Later, the Democrat team announced that advertising on Snapchat helped them attract more young voters and get a stronger social media presence in critical moments. This became possible mainly because such political ads were naturally integrated into the platform, and Snapchat’s interactive tools were used to get closer to young people.

As dropshipping is a popular form of eCommerce, it is no surprise that it is advertised on social media platforms. Are Snapchat Ads good for dropshipping? A short answer is yes. Snapchat allows people who operate in this sphere to stand out, build their brand, and drive traffic to their store. Of course, the key point here is to have an interesting offer for young and modern people. 

The platform’s visuals-first approach is highly beneficial to this type of eCommerce business as people “digest” potential buys with their eyes. Snapchat Ads for dropshipping work greatly thanks to their vivid and interactive nature, which only leads to a constant and stable increase in sales.

In terms of dropshipping advertisements on Snap, we can mention Gymshark, a brand of fitness apparel. Its team actively used Snapchat’s AR Lenses to promote and distribute its workout gear. Following the examples of other brands we mentioned above, they gave users a chance to virtually try on their apparel and check how their products would look on people. The viral nature of Snapchat ads helped Gymshark significantly increase sales (twice as many as expected) and impressions, and significantly boost its brand awareness. 

For the music industry, Snapchat is a powerful tool that helps artists communicate and establish a connection with their existing audience and potential listeners. Story ads and AR Lesnes are great tools for promoting musicians in a way that will resonate with the younger audience natively within the platform. Moreover, Snapchat ads for music are great for promoting upcoming tours, advertising new albums, and informing fans about new merchandise drops.

Travis Scott, a famous rapper from the United States, developed a creative strategy to promote his 2018 album Astroworld on Snapchat. His team created AR lenses that allowed the artist’s audience to dive into the album-themed visuals and experience the album’s artwork immersively. This campaign not only raised interest in and promoted the upcoming album but also increased related merchandise sales and ticket sales for the upcoming tour dedicated to the album. His success showed other performers how beneficial advertising on a platform full of young people can be for a modern musician.

Whether you use Snapchat ads for a small business or an artistic industry, there are some basic things you should know about optimizing your campaigns there and getting the best results possible for all your efforts.

1. Implement server-side tracking. No advertising campaign can succeed without detailed and clear data on its performance. While businesses that still stick to client-side tracking suffer from data loss due to ad blockers and browser restrictions, switching to a server-side model solves this problem and ensures privacy compliance, which is crucial nowadays.
You can set up the Snapchat CAPI with Gateway or sGTM. The first option gives you more customization opportunities, while Gateway is a cheaper and faster solution. You can get more information on how to set up Snapchat Conversions API and Gateway in our blog.
2. Try advanced audience insights. Review the insights Snapchat provides on the user behavior and demographics. This information will allow you to optimize the campaigns and understand which category of users it is best to focus on to achieve the best results.
3. Use third-party analytic tools. Do not hesitate to use Google Analytics in combination with Snapchat Ads data. For many big businesses, it is a standard practice, after all. The more analytical platforms, the better, so to speak. They will let you examine the situation with your campaigns from another perspective and cover the areas you initially missed.

Yes, it may sound like a lot of work and many things to focus on, but once you set everything up, it will operate almost automatically, and you will only have to reap the fruits of your hard work.

No matter how funny it sounds, soon using Snapchat ads for the mayor's election would be completely normal. This platform is associated with young people, and they are and will be the moving force for different brands, musicians, and literally everything in the future. Snapchat, as an advertising platform, already provides businesses and brands with interesting interactive opportunities, and there is no reason to expect that they won’t keep developing in this direction.