Snapchat is making it easier for advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns on the platform with the launch of a new measurement programme. Comprising sophisticated new metrics which focus on marketing mix modelling (MMM), this new initiative is in collaboration with third party data companies Nielsen, Neustar Marketshare, Marketing Management Analytics and Analytic Partners.
According to parent company Snap, 55 per cent of all ad dollars spent in Q2 of this year included some form of third party measurement, demonstrating the growing appetite for metrics among brands. The programme, which Snap introduced this week, is the latest in a series of partnerships including Moat, Oracle Data Cloud and DoubleClick.
“Marketing executives continue to face the pressure of connecting their marketing investments to revenues and by partnering with industry leaders like Snap, we are providing the needed transparency for effective marketing allocations,” says Julie Fleischer, Neustar’s VP of Product Marketing, in a press release. “Partnerships like this are imperative to help marketers see the full picture of the impact of their spend and to help publishers like Snap validate their contribution of marketing effectiveness.
These firms will track an ad’s impact on sales, meaning for the first time marketers will be able to compare return on ad spend on Snapchat to that on other platforms including Facebook.
“It’s probably not a coincidence that Snapchat is rolling out this measurement just as marketers are about to head into the fall season, where they sit down with their media agencies to decide how to allocate their ad dollars for 2018,” writes Tim Peterson of Marketing Land, pointing out that Snapchat’s previous inability to offer an “apples to apples” look at campaign performance has been a primary barrier to ad buyers.
The timely introduction of this new measurement programme may well help Snap’s competitive chances against rival platforms (Facebook, Google and Twitter all offer similar MMM dashboards). According to Neustar’s findings in the movie studios category, every dollar spent on Snapchat ads resulted in a $14.33 return on ad spend (ROAS) — a handy figure to be able to pull out of the bag ahead of ad buying season.
