Snapchat offers a few different options for anyone looking to advertise on the platform — reaching out directly to the Snapchat sales team, using the Snapchat ad manager or connecting with a Snapchat certified partner.
Take a look at how the pricing for these Snapchat options works and learn how to create a budget that will allow you to reach your goals with Snapchat advertising.
Related: Everything you need to get started with advertising on Snapchat.
Bidding, billing and budget — Snapchat’s self-serve tool has you covered
With Snapchat’s ad manager tool, the cost of an ad is based on how advertisers structure their campaigns. Snapchat charges per 1,000 impressions (CPM), but offers goal-based bidding.
Goal-based bidding allows the advertiser to set up a maximum price for each time a viewer performs the action the ad is optimized for. The goal options available are swipe ups, app installs and impressions.
Snapchat recommends setting a swipe up bid between $1 and $3, making adjustments as needed according to the ad performance. App install bids are recommended to be set at the cost per install goal, which is the ideal amount the advertiser would pay for an individual user’s installation of the app. As with swipe up bids, the install bid should be optimized based on performance. Advertisers can also set a daily budget for their campaigns.
Once your campaign has been set up, Snapchat will deliver your ads aiming to generate the most of the specified goal at the lowest cost. Due to budget pacing and user-action prediction variance, the observed cost per event may exceed the inputted bid amount.
While Snapchat advertisers do get to decide how much each specified action (goal) means to them, they are still charged by impressions (CPM).
The budget is set at a daily cost and should be optimized for each ad sets’ performance. Snapchat recommends spending more towards ad sets that are performing well and pausing those that aren’t.
If you want some help to manage your campaign, you can reach out to one of Snapchat’s Certified Partners. The Certified Partners program allows advertisers to work with companies that have expertise in Snapchat advertising — such as Strike Social — from the initial campaign strategy to creative execution.
The partner sets up the Ad Account with Snapchat, and a monthly invoice is sent based on the media spend for that month.
Related: A look inside the Snapchat Ad Manager
Purchasing directly from Snapchat
Snapchat also gives advertisers the option to buy ads directly without the use of the ad manager. In this case, Snapchat buys the media for the advertiser and charges a flat rate for CPM. The rate changes for the various ad formats, however.
- Snap Ads, which is Snapchat’s mobile video ads offering, start at around $3,000 per month in ad spend.
- Sponsored Lenses vary from day to day:
- $450,000 per day if it’s running Sunday-Thursday
- $500,000 per day on Friday and Saturday
- $700,000 for holidays and special events, such as the Super Bowl
- Snapchat Discover Ads start at $50,000 daily
- Sponsored nationwide geofilters are estimated to be about one-fifth of the cost of Sponsored Lenses
Snapchat has made creating Sponsored local geofilters even easier now that users have the ability to create the filter from directly inside the app. The minimum area a geofilter can cover is 20,000 square feet and the largest is 50,000,000 square feet. The exact price depends on the desired location and duration of the geofilter.
Purchasing directly from Snapchat ensures that an ad will run within a specific location of the app, whereas creating a campaign through the ad manager allows ads to be placed anywhere their bid can win, such as between user’s Stories or on the Discover page.
Snapping ads and cashing checks
Snapchat advertising is the only platform that offers a flat rate cost should you choose to go directly to Snapchat for all of your placements. Working with the ad manager, however, offers more flexibility to your budget the same way Facebook and Google AdWords do. It’s up to the advertiser’s discretion on which route to take.
