Robots do it better. If they’re not improving our paid search bid adjustments, they’re showing the most relevant products to users with Facebook’s Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences on their own. Truly, it’s a brave new world.
But if that wasn’t enough, with the introduction of Snapchat Custom Audiences, the robots are now analysing our business data to help increase the efficacy of our advertising campaigns. What a pain!
What Are Snapchat Custom Audiences?
Put simply, Custom Audiences allow you to reach specific Snapchatters based on data that is unique to your business, product, or service. These audiences come in five different flavours; Saved Audience; Snap Audience Match; Lookalike Audience; Pixel Audiences; and, Third Party Custom Audiences.
Below, we delve into the basics of Custom Audiences, and explain what they do and how you can use them to improve your own Snapchat advertising.
Direct Targeting
Users who have already engaged with your brand are more likely to convert. Whether they’re already loyal customers or familiar with your products after a site visit, known users already trust your brand much more than unknown competitors.
Use Pixel Audiences to remarket to site visitors and increase the likelihood that they convert. Alternatively, you could show ads about a new product range to users with a history of buying particular products with an Audience Match audience.
Lookalike Audiences
The theory behind Lookalike Audiences is that users who behave similarly will convert similarly. Snapchat’s Lookalike Audiences, similar to the same product within Facebook and Similar Audiences within Google, prove that sometimes the robots know our audiences better than we do.
They can look at conversion data, examine hundreds of ‘levers’ to find users who behave similarly to the converters collected within that data and target those similar users. This helps us to target highly-relevant users with prospecting activity, driving more efficient conversions from upper-funnel activity.
Audience Insights
The Audience Insights tool allows advertisers to take a seed audience, like a list of converters from an Audience Match, and analyse the audience against Snapchat data.
This will provide extensive insights into how to reach those users with Snapchat Ads, including locations, demographics, and which Snapchat Lifestyle Audiences they fall into. This information can be vital for planning future campaigns.
How is Snapchat’s Data Gathered?
Snapchat Custom Audiences process data gathered in the platform from two main sources:
Snap Audience Match
Audience Match allows you to upload a list of email addresses to Snapchat and match them to existing users. It then creates an audience of matched users within the platform.
Snap Pixel Data
When the Snap Pixel is implemented on an advertiser’s website, an audience list of every user who triggers the pixel is created. In addition, if a Pixel Event is implemented (e.g. a Purchase), an additional list is created.
The Bottom Line
Custom Audiences are a powerful tool for advertising on Snapchat. While they require a little more implementation than pre-built audiences, the positive impact on your campaigns can be huge, so it’s well worth testing them out.
If you’d like to chat through the possibilities of Snapchat Custom Audiences, or want to expand your upper-funnel activity, get in touch with our display team today >>>
