How Much Do Snapchat Ads Really Cost?

The cost of Snapchat ads varies. 

More accurately, the cost of Snapchat ads WILDLY varies.

Depending on many factors, you can spend anywhere from $5 to $700,000 on Snapchat advertising!

But what factors cause this massive variance?

The Five Factors that Affect Your Snapchat Ads Cost

 The most significant advantage of Snapchat's advertising platform might be the versatility the app provides for advertisers. This versatility allows businesses of all sizes and various advertising goals to maximize their campaign's effectiveness. However, it's also because of the sheer number of formats, strategies, and campaign goals that the price of advertising can vary so much.

1. Billing Based on Goals

Snapchat's advertising manager has the most goal-oriented advertising platform among the big social media companies. This is valuable for marketers who are new to Snapchat to understand how much each goal conversion costs. When creating an advertising campaign on Snapchat, you need to choose an advertising goal. Snapchat gives you 16 objectives to choose from:

• Maximize impressions
• Swipe up (Snapchat specific action taken)
• Install an app
• Two-second video view
• 15-second video view
• Filter share
• Story open
• Sign up
• Purchase
• Add to cart
• Page view
• App sign-up 
• App add to cart
• App purchase
• App purchase (re-engagement)
• App open (re-engagement)

The main benefit of setting a goal for your campaign is that Snapchat can understand what you want to achieve and help you optimize your advertisements. With Snapchat's help, all you have to worry about is optimising your advertisement price.

2. Bidding Strategy

Snapchat ads provide three bidding strategies. 

1. Auto-Bidding. Auto-Bidding allows Snapchat to bid on your behalf. They will make bids, determining how much you should pay for each impression. Based on the daily budget you set, Snapchat algorithms make bids to maximize the number of times people perform the desired action of your ad.
2. Max Bid. The maximum bid approach is similar to the auto-bidding option; however, you also limit how much you are willing to bid per impression. Everything else is the same as an auto-bid; however, there's a limit on how much Snapchat algorithms can bid per impression.
3. Target Cost. This approach allows you to give Snapchat a rough guideline for how much you are willing to pay per the desired action.

3. Snapchat Ad Quality

Like other platforms, ad quality and relevance play a vital role in how much you wind up paying for a bid.

This is because Snapchat and other platforms want to provide users with the most relevant information.

According to Snapchat, 

"We want to drive positive advertiser value while also ensuring consumers continue to have positive experiences on the platform.

To achieve this, auction winners are not solely selected based on the advertiser's monetary bid, but rather, through the inclusion of a quality and relevance component."

This means focusing on creating a high-quality high-relevance ad is a must.

4. Ad Type

Snapchat gives you the option of choosing between six advertisement types:

1. Single image or video adverts: These are full-screen images or video ads that appear in users' stories.
2. Collection ads: These are a collection of four tappable "tiles" that allow advertisers to showcase their product's collection.
3. Story ads: These are branded tiles that are found in Snapchat's "Discover" section.
4. Lenses experience: These lens experiences are an augmented reality experience, unlike any other social media advert. 
5. Commercials: These are ads that cannot be skipped after the first six seconds; more prominent companies mainly use these adverts to increase brand or product awareness.
6. Filters: These ads overlay users' snaps and can be a fun tool to add awareness and foster engagement.

Like other social media platforms, Snapchat mainly relies on a bidding strategy; however, unlike other platforms, advertisers can directly purchase advertising.

According to Snapchat's pricing: 

Single image or video adverts start at $3,000 a month.

Sponsored lenses can vary from $450,000 to $700,000 per day, depending on the day of the week or event.

5. Snapchat Advertising Metrics

Keeping an eye on metrics and key performance indicators is a vital part of any marketing plan. 

Thankfully Snapchat allows us to do this with a comprehensive metrics dashboard. 

While it can be overwhelming to learn a brand new set of Key Performance Indicators, there are a few you want to become familiar with:

•  Spend: total amount spent on a campaign
• Impressions: the number of times your advertisement was viewed.
• eCPM: average cost-per-mille (or thousand views)
• Completions: the number of ads watched to at least 97% completion.
• Average Screen Time: the average amount of time someone spends watching your ads.
• eCPV: the average cost per video view (remember, a video view is two seconds)
• Swipe Ups: the amount of times users swiped up to view your attachment or link.
• eCPSU: the average cost per swipe up.

How does Snapchat Ads Cost Compare to Facebook Ads?

 In a study performed by the UK firm Social Shepard, they ran Facebook and Snapchat campaigns for the same client to see which produced better results.

The spend for their Facebook campaign was just over 60,000 pounds which led to 17,167 purchases, equalling 507,475 pounds in revenue.

Due to the differences in metrics, they did not publish the ad spend, purchases, or revenue for Snapchat. Still, they compared the two by working out how much they paid to convert each customer by dividing the amount spent by the number of purchases.

The cost per purchase for Snapchat was 4.12 pounds and 3.56 pounds for Facebook.

They found that while Snapchat had a cheaper cost per click, advertising on Facebook was more efficient, costing 56p less to convert a customer on average.

So how much will you spend on Snapchat advertising? 

Ultimately you're in control of how much you spend on Snapchat ads. Snapchat provides advertisers with an extraordinary amount of flexibility, allowing you to set limits and define what a successful campaign looks like to you. 

Snapchat then optimizes your campaigns based on this to ensure you get the most out of your budget.

Are you looking for Snapchat and other advertising experts near you? Click here to get free quotes and hire the right pros.