Getting started in Ads Manager
Before you can launch ads in Ads Manager, Snapchat asks for three things: a Snapchat account, a business account and a Public Profile. You sign up at ads.snapchat.com, enter your business details, confirm your ad account's country and currency, and add a phone number.
- You can add a payment method when you are ready to launch your first ad.
- You can create as many ad accounts as you like.
- Public Profiles are required for advertising. They are free and need no payment method.
How a Snapchat campaign is built
- Campaign: you choose the objective, a name and a status, active or paused. You can set start and end times, a daily spend cap and a lifetime spend cap. Snapchat may ask whether the campaign is for housing, employment or credit advertising.
- Ad set: you pick a performance goal based on the objective, a bidding strategy, a daily or lifetime budget and dates. Here you also set locations, placements, demographics, audiences, devices and an optional frequency cap, and you can attach the Snap Pixel or Snap App ID.
- Ad: the image or video with your brand name, headline and call-to-action button, such as Shop Now, Book Now, Apply Now or Sign Up.
Objectives
Snapchat cut its objectives from 12 to 5. Some former objectives now live as settings inside the five, such as performance goals, promotion types and conversion locations.
| Objective | Snapchat's description | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness & Engagement | Reach Snapchatters and create interest in your brand | Brand awareness, video views, ad engagement, calls and texts, place promotion |
| Traffic | Get Snapchatters to a destination like a website or app | Clicks to a website or app, landing page views |
| Leads | Get Snapchatters to share their contact info with you | Leads, clicks to a lead form or website, landing page views, website conversions |
| App Promotion | Get Snapchatters to install your app or engage with it | App installs, installs with an in-app action, app re-engagement |
| Sales | Get Snapchatters to buy your product or service | Product catalog sales, website conversions, app re-engagement for conversions |
Ad formats
Snapchat ads generally use a vertical 9:16 format, and accepted file types include .mp4, .mov, .jpg and .png. For a single image or video ad the brand name can be up to 25 characters and the headline up to 34, spaces included, and videos run 3 to 180 seconds. If you are just starting, Snapchat recommends a single image or video ad.
| Format | What it is |
|---|---|
| Single image or video ad | One full-screen image or video that can show in the Stories and Spotlight ad placements |
| Story Ads | A series of images or videos that people tap through |
| Collection Ads | Showcases your products so people can browse and buy from your shop or website |
| Commercials | Non-skippable for up to 6 seconds and up to 3 minutes long, shown within Snap's curated content |
| Sponsored Snaps | Snaps sent directly to people in the Chat tab; recipients can reply |
| AR Lenses and Filters | Interactive AR experiences through the camera, and filters people add to their Snaps |
Targeting
Snapchat's standard targeting covers demographics, location, language and device. On top of it you can use predefined audiences, advanced demographics and custom audiences. Location is set per ad set and defaults to your business country.
- Location: countries, regions or states, metros, postal codes, addresses and latitude-longitude points, up to 500 locations. It covers people living, working and recently in the area.
- Age and gender: left blank, the ad reaches all Snapchatters. Local laws can limit targeting; in Australia, for example, the age-targeted audience narrows to 16+ automatically.
- Language: people who read or understand a language you pick; Turkish is on the list.
- Device: operating system, carrier, connection type and device make or model.
- Custom audiences from a contact list of emails or phone numbers, or from your Snap Pixel, and lookalike audiences built from them.
Budget and bidding
You can cap spend at campaign level with a daily or lifetime spend cap. Each ad set then gets its own daily or lifetime budget, a performance goal and a bidding strategy, and Snapchat's goal-based bidding optimizes toward the action someone is most likely to take. Ads Manager shows an estimate of each ad set's potential audience based on your budget, so check current figures there rather than relying on fixed numbers.
Measurement: Snap Pixel and Conversions API
The Snap Pixel is a piece of JavaScript code on your website, or an integration with an e-commerce store such as Shopify. It tracks actions after people interact with your ads, such as page visits, cart additions and purchases, and lets you build Pixel custom audiences and lookalike audiences. You can install it with Google Tag Manager or the Shopify app, and check it with the Snap Pixel Helper in Chrome.
The Conversions API, or CAPI, is a server-to-server connection that sends conversion events from your server to Snapchat instead of relying only on browser tracking. Snapchat recommends using the Snap Pixel and CAPI together for a fuller picture.
Ad review and common rejections
All ads are subject to Snap's review and approval. Most are reviewed within 8 hours, although it can take longer, so Snapchat recommends submitting ads ahead of your start date. Editing an approved ad or ad set may send it back to review. Snap reviews the landing page as well as the creative.
- Ads addressed to, or meant to appeal to, children under 13; Snapchat is a 13+ app.
- Creatives that do not meet Snapchat's specs and creative guidelines.
- Unclear disclosures, or an advertiser who is not accurately and clearly identified in the ad.
- Low-quality landing pages, such as dead links or pages not formatted for mobile phones.
- Disruptive pages with unexpected experiences, sudden loud noises or aggressive flashing.
- Irrelevant pages that do not match the product, or unsafe pages that try to download files or phish for data.
Advertising from Türkiye
Turkey is on Snapchat's list of countries where business sign-up is available, and on its list of countries you can target in Ads Manager. Turkish is one of the languages you can target. Ads must also comply with local laws, industry codes and cultural sensitivities in every area where they run.
Running Snapchat campaigns with Mecrio
- You connect your Snapchat ad account through Snapchat's own sign-in screen. Mecrio sets up single image and video ads.
- Mecrio first uploads your vertical image or video and prepares the headline, brand name, button, link and your Public Profile. It then creates the campaign, the ad squad and the ad in your own ad account.
- Everything is created paused, so nothing spends until you start it. Starting from Mecrio switches the ad squad and the ad on too.
- Before anything is created, Mecrio crops images to an exact 9:16 frame and flags anything below the minimum size. It also flags higher age minimums by country, interests not offered in a targeted country, a headline identical to your brand name, and a link that does not start with https.
- If your ad account has no Public Profile, nothing is created and Mecrio asks you to create one in Snapchat first.
- Later you can change the budget, dates, audience, placements, bid, headline, button and link from Mecrio, or pause again. Ad spend goes from your own ad account directly to Snapchat, and Mecrio takes no cut.