How effective is Snapchat advertising?

How Snapchat measures results

• The Manage Ads view in Ads Manager shows amount spent, paid impressions, clicks, click rate and video views.
• The Snap Pixel and Conversions API capture conversions, and the Snap Pixel also tracks return on ad spend.
• A Split Test, chosen in Advanced Create, compares two ad versions that differ in one thing.

Give the system time to learn

Snap advises against changing an ad in its first 4 days, even if early results look weak, so the exploration phase can find the people most likely to act. Its bidding guide says the learning phase typically lasts 1 to 7 days, depending on audience, bid, budget and past conversion volume.

In practice

For apps and games, effectiveness means cost per retained or paying user, measured in your mobile measurement partner (MMP) and SKAdNetwork, not clicks. Snap’s homepage cites third-party return on ad spend benchmarks, but they come from mixed advertisers and are not a forecast for your app. Run one clean test with the App Installs objective, hold changes through learning, then compare Snapchat with your other channels on the same cohort metric.

See how we measure Snapchat for apps on our Snapchat ads agency page.