Snapchat Ad Metrics: A Detailed Guide for E-Commerce Sellers

Love it or hate it, Snapchat offers a cost-effective advertising channel with an incredible reach and access to untapped markets. As a business owner, you can boost your e-commerce store with Snapchat ads, especially if you get a solid understanding of the different metrics used to track the performance of different types of ads. Just remember, you can only monitor your progress toward reaching your goals if you set clear objectives.

» New to e-commerce ads? Follow this ultimate guide to effective e-commerce ads

Snapchat Ad Formats

If you're looking to drive sales or app downloads, or simply want to engage potential customers, Snapchat Ads are known for delivering good results. Choose one (or more) of these easy-to-use formats—just make sure it suits your targeted audience and aligns with your advertising objectives.

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Single Image & Video Ads

Single image or video ads—just like Snaps—give you the creative freedom to advertise your products or services using sight, motion, and sound. Your ads can be either motion graphic, live, cinema-graph, gif style, or stills. Remember to add a swipe-up call to action at the bottom of the screen—this is the central action that drives this type of ad. Users can be driven to your website, an AR lens, or your app page in the app store.

Story Ads

Story ads give you the opportunity to reach both current and potential consumers by uploading a branded tile in Snapchat’s Discover section. This then opens into a collection of up to 20 images or videos. Story ads is a clever technique to promote your business in a way that's easily consumable. You can use it to showcase a range of products, use always-on branding, and even release a movie.

Collection Ads

Use Collection ads to promote a series of products in a fun way with a seamless shopping experience. A collection ad is a basic Snapchat video with a ribbon of thumbnail-sized products visible at the bottom of the screen. This ad format works well if you have one product with many different uses or a star product in a range you want to promote. So, avoid trying to cramp all your content into one view.

Commercials

A Snapchat commercial is a video ad that can last from six seconds up to three minutes. The first six seconds of each ad can't be skipped. Your consumers will see these adverts while playing games or within Snapchat’s Curated Content. The main aim of a Snapchat commercial is to drive awareness and build your brand presence and consistency.

Filters

Snapchat filters offer business owners a cost-effective way to build a solid brand presence on Snapchat. You have a choice of regular filters and then you have geofilters. A Snapchat geofilter is location restricted. It adds a creative visual effect that can be applied to both photos and videos as long as they're taken through the app. Geofilters are unique because they're only available to people within a certain geographical radius, giving these filters a true marketing edge if you want to drive your consumers toward specific locations.

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13 Key Snapchat Ads Metrics You Should Be Tracking

These valuable Snapchat ad metrics have been grouped according to the different business areas they're related to, namely: delivery, spend, and conversion.

Delivery

1. Total Impressions

Total impressions is the total number of times your ad is seen or displayed on a screen, including multiple views by one person.

Therefore, your total impressions is the sum of your paid and earned impressions. Paid impressions refer to how many times your ad was sent and fully rendered to a Snapchatter, while earned impressions is how many times your ad was viewed after a Snapchatter shared it via their Chat or Stories. This metric will help you gauge how consumers are interacting with your brand.

2. Total Unique Views

This is the number of consumers who opened the first frame in your Snapchat story for the very first time for a minimum of one second. This metric can be measured weekly, monthly, and yearly.

3. Reach

Reach refers to the total number of unique Snapchatters who viewed your story on specific days. You can monitor and record your reach to see how your business is growing over time. It will also tell you which days your viewers are engaging with you more.

4. Engagement Rate

Use engagement rate to measure the performance of a piece of content, including views, screenshots, and replies. Use this formula to calculate your engagement rate:

Engagement Rate =

(Total Number of Interactions / Number of Followers) x 100

5. Completion Rate

Measure the loyalty of your consumers by calculating the percentage of followers who have viewed an entire story. This means they viewed the story right from the first snap all the way through to the last one. On other social networks, your completion rate is referred to as the retention rate.

Spend

6. Ad Spend

Ad Spend is the total amount of money spent on an ad campaign to date. Use this metric to monitor the success rate (or failure rate) of each campaign and to identify what works and what doesn't work for your brand. Over time, you'll be able to organically tweak your adverts for optimum results.

7. Cost per Click (CPC)

CPC is a method of paid advertising where you pay Snapchat each time a consumer clicks on an ad. CPC is a cost-effective advertising method and helps you keep more control over your budget. Use this formula to calculate CPC:

CPC =

Total Ad Cost / Number of Clicks

Let's look at a simple example. If you spent $200 in a day and got 20 clicks in return, your calculated CPC would be $10.

8. Cost per View (CPV)

Use CPV for your brand awareness campaigns. As a business owner, you would pay a sum every time one of your videos is viewed. This payment ratio works well if you want to make your advertising budget stretch as long as possible. The formula to calculate your CPV is:

CPV =

Advertising Cost / Video Views

9. Cost per 1000 Impressions (CPM)

CPM is also called "cost per mille", This metric measures the price of 1 000 impressions on a piece of marketing. So, if your CPM is $5, that means you are paying $5 for every 1 000 impressions of your advertisement. Use this formula to calculate your CPM:

CPM =

Cost / Impressions x 1 000

Conversion

10. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

This is one of the more important metrics, because you'll learn how much revenue you've earned for every dollar you spent on a campaign. Use this formula to calculate ROAS:

ROAS =

Revenue Earned from Ad Spend / Ad Spend

Let's look at a quick example. If you make $100 for every $10 you spent on an advertising campaign, your ROAS for that particular campaign would be $10 or 10:1.

11. Pages Viewed

This is the total number of times a Snapchatter has viewed your Snap or video whether using the app or your website. This metric tells you what aspects of your marketing campaign are working and getting traffic, and points out low performers.

12. Add to Carts

This metric tells you how many products or services have been added to carts before the conversion takes place. If this number is high, and your conversion rates are low, there's some form of barrier to your sales that you need to investigate.

13. Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV tells you how much a customer is spending with you each time they order. If this number is low, consider formulating special deals, promotions, up-sells, and discounts. The higher your AOV, the higher your revenue.

Key Takeaway

The importance of accurate data analysis cannot be understated. You need to be able to correctly interpret the results of your data analysis so that you can keep on improving your strategy to drive conversions. BeProfit is the ultimate solution because this software will help you to accurately and easily calculate gross profit and margins, as well as perform a variety of other functions, all from raw data. No mess, no fuss.

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