Snapchat for Affiliates (11)
@mrgreen asked me to repost this article I did on Medium about Snapchat Ads for Affiliates here on STM. Hope you like it. If you do make sure you follow me on Medium 
Snapchat Ads for Affiliates
TLRD; Some opportunities for those that can think outside the typical redirect-landingpage-conversion flow.
Lately I’ve had more and more affiliates ask me about Snapchat.
Specifically …
“How do I run advertising campaigns on Snapchat?”
and
“How do I know who I am competing with?”
This two part post is a summary of some of the things I figured out that answer these questions.
I hope it’s useful for you.
If anything is not clear or you have any better info, or just wanna say “hi”, make sure you post a response below.
UPDATE: Here is my guide about spying on Snapchat Geofilters
What is Snapchat
Are you for real? If you don’t know that … go and crawl back under that rock you came from.
Or download the app (iOS & Android), and create an account.
Then read the Noobs guide.
What type of advertising is available
I am focussing here on paid media as that’s the main space you are interested in as an affiliate.
Right now these are the paid advertising channels on snapchat:
- Sponsored Geofilters: Geofenced custom filters users can apply to their snaps. 20k square feet costs $5 per hour.
- Snap Ads: 10s vertical video ads shown between snaps with swipe up interactive content
- Sponsored Lenses: Custom interactive animations users can add to their snaps
Besides paid media, there are of course content and influencer marketing strategies you can apply. Let me know in the responses below if your interested in those.
How do I buy ads?
Geofilters are easy — Snapchat have a selfserv platform for that.
You can read more about that below, including how to create your first Geofilter yourself.
For the other types of ads — there are no selfserv platforms right now.
Here is the list of Ad partners.
Probably the one most likely to release a selfserv is TubeMogul.
I’ve reached out to each partner with a set of questions so I can compare them in more detail soon.
- Criteria for taking on customers
- Smallest campaign they will take on
- Do they offer a selfserv platform (ie like facebook ads, or google adwords) where businesses can buy and manage Snap Ad campaigns, or do they only offer managed service.
- If they do — how can a business get access?
- If they don’t have it now — are they planning this and if so — when will it be available?
- Have they worked with any Direct Response / Lead Generation campaigns
- What are their 3 tips for snap ad campaigns
- Can they share some examples or case studies
Results will be in a future follow up post. Make sure you follow me to ensure the post will show up in your feed.
Snapchat did release their Ads API recently but only the 8 partners above have access.
�� So selfserv is quit limited right now.
For the rest of this post I am going to cover the only selfserv option — Geofilters.
How much traffic is there?
This is really hard to estimate.
There is a ton of activity on Snapchat, but the amount of traffic your Geofilters will generate can be hugely variable.
Like any campaign really.
Bidding on some small niche keyword in Adwords will give you very little traffic. The same applies for Geofilters.
Here are some stats to give you an idea:
- 71% of Americans over 12 years old are aware of Snapchat, and 23% use it, of which 54% use it daily.
- Snapchat has more users then Twitter, LinkedIn, or WhatsApp
- 9000 snaps send per second
- 10 billion video views per day
- 76% of Snapchatters purchase products online
- 30 minutes in app time per day
With that, selecting the right geo filter settings can generate some decent views of your filter.
Here are some Geofilter campaign stats:
- Gary V posted about an example campaign that with $63 spend, 176 uses of the filter, generated 230k views — Thats 0.27 CPM.
- Alex Kehr spend $15.33 on a Pablo Popup filter over 3 days, with 1101 uses. Snaps with the filter were viewed 214,257 times. Thats $0.07 CPM. This drove 786 visits to his website (via Redit) and USD80 in sales.
How much do Geofilters cost?
Geofilters start at $5 per hour for 20k squarefeet and are priced by CPDPSF.
WTF?
I can cope with CPM, CPC, EPC etc.
But CPDPSF?
CPDPSF = Cost Per Day Per Square Foot
Here are the cost of some key locations thanks to Matt Horne.
Certain locations have massive price increases — Leazes Park, Newcastle, UK has a 900% price premium over next door Newcastle University. Its because it covers St James Park, home of foorball in Newcastle.
Adding Geofilters to key event locations you will see is where the price premium kicks in. It is also where the opportunities are.
Luckily the cost also reduces based on “volume” — as in — the number of days that your ad is running.
55% price reduction if your running for 28 days compared to 1 day.
How to run Geofilter Ads
Its super easy to launch your Geofilters.
I could explain this in detail but loads of people have already done this.
Probably better then I could.
Just go here and do your thing:
http://snapchat.com/on-demand
Here is a good post explaining it step by step by Gary V.
If you prefer video — this one has a decent walkthrough and lasts about 8 minutes.
Problems with Geofilters
There are some hurdles to overcome if as an affiliate you want to profit off Snapchat … just in case you thought this was easy traffic.
No links / urls to click on
No listing websites, snapchat IDs or other contact information on your filter
No Snapchat Ghost Codes, or FB Messenger Codes
So how the hell do I use this for Direct Response?
Good question.
To be honest I am not sure just yet. Certainly more spying required.
Seems like as usual the main customer Snapchat wants are those brand guys with deep pocket ����.
So to get this to work for Direct Response, you need to be innovative.
One approach is the one used by Alex on his Kanye Popup filter.
I just replied to Alex, keen to get some more info on this one!
Have you seen any other good examples?
I am looking and collating as we speak.
Please post a response to share the gems if you can.
What are the ad requirements
Ad requirements are pretty simple
- Filters are 1080 wide x 1920 tall PNG files
- Under 300KB in filesize
- Max 2 lines of text
- You can download some templates here
Make sure you check the guidelines as usual. You want your geo filter approved after all. And no — you can’t cloak this.
How do I create the filters?
You can just use your normal favourite graphics editor.
Use these templates as a starting point.
There are also a bunch of online editors available now.
Pepper Filters seems to be one of the more popular ones.
Can you spy on Geofilters?
Pretty sure the answer is Yes!
But it is not going to be easy.
A manual spying approach would look something like this:
- create a custom iOS app
- create a gpx file for xcode (gps route file)
- run iOS simulator with gpx file
- confirm your location in maps
- open snapchat
- snap
- check out if there are any filters
Not easy for sure.
Here are some of the links if you want to figure it out by yourself:
Apple WWDC video from 2011 about faking your location in Simulator
Quora question about faking location
PokenmonGo Hack Video
I will publish a full step by step tomorrow … if I figure it out ��! (UPDATE: Its Live now)
So make sure you follow me on Medium to be notified when its live.
Till tomorrow.
Resources
You can see the articles and posts I referenced at the bottom of the original medium post.
The Duke of Devon is baccccccck! Sick post, had to make sure it got the attention it deserved!
Did it
Great post!
Here is Part 2 - How to Spy on Geofilters anywhere in the world yourself. Ill repost the main part which is the exact step by step to spying here on STM tomorrow. Need to get some sleep now.
https://medium.com/@imrat/spy-on-sna...8f0#.oh0hw5djl
Really really curious to hear if you or anyone has run any affiliate based campaigns via Snapchat. Seems like it's still very hard to move people away from Snapchat mode over to their mobile browser.
Originally Posted by Mr Green
There is no click through, ID, or following. You cant even show a domain.
So you need to get people to search for your site or profile somehow in the 2 seconds before they swipe away.
Impossible?
One approach where it may work is to support a campaign - so use Geofilters to create familiarity with a brand, name or image.
Then reuse that image in ads that target this same demographic.
Still a long shot i think.
Of course Snap Ads offer way more opportunities. 10s Video with Upswipe detail. I just saw gatorade even build a game within snapchat.
Originally Posted by tijn
There is no click through, ID, or following. You cant even show a domain.
So you need to get people to search for your site or profile somehow in the 2 seconds before they swipe away.
Impossible?
One approach where it may work is to support a campaign - so use Geofilters to create familiarity with a brand, name or image.
Then reuse that image in ads that target this same demographic.
Still a long shot i think.
Of course Snap Ads offer way more opportunities. 10s Video with Upswipe detail. I just saw gatorade even build a game within snapchat.
So I am sure affiliates find a way to use that for their campaigns.
.
Found this online. Someone claming to make money by selling products on Snapchat. Seems pretty hard to implement with long aff links though.
"What makes Snapchat amazing is it's like a private moment, a 1 on 1 sales channel.
The users don't know how many people are following you, they don't have any distractions (likes, comments, social pressure) all they see is what's being put right in front of them. And if you're a great marketer boy oh boy...
So for the spatula example, assuming you have spatula fanatics following you. This is like QVC in the palm of your hands..!
I would create stories revolving around the lifestyle of spatula users, cooking, baking etc. Stories of it in action flipping, lifting, spreading. Marketing 101, you show and record exactly what they can do with it. You talk about and show them why it's the best and why silicone beats the regular boring spatulas etc.
This is your private 1 on 1 channel right to your customers.
Then, every now and then you add a textbar with your BuyMySpecialSpatualaHere.com in your snaps.
You would not believe how many people exit the app and actually type in the domain(this is why I was hesitant with Snapchat at first, nothing clickable) but believe me they do! I've made x,xxx days in profit using Snapchat!
And another pro tip is having Snapchat takeovers. Basically a takeover is having someone famous or influential in your niche log into your account and do a "takeover" for the day and create stories for you. So in the spatula example, I would try my hardest to get the Queen Spatula on to promote/showcase my products.
From my experience everyone is on Snapchat nowadays. And it's only growing."
Interesting article on the growing power of Snapchat Tijn..it was a good read but what particularly interested me were the stats like this one : "76% of Snapchatters purchase products online" I mean this is an amazing conversion rate no matter how you slice it.
I wonder if Vine still has the same power it did a few years ago...I def don't think the above 76% is true at all for that platform 
- all I see are articles that Snapchat is the future.
76% of the snapchatters purchase products online. <- how does that equate to a conversion rate?
The way i interpret that statement is that It simply means they are very likely to do online purchases.
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