Snapchat has long touted itself as a place to reach the youngs. But “young” is a relative term because, well, people age.
When the app first launched in 2011 – back when marketers were obsessed with reaching youthful millennials – Snapchat pitched itself as the ideal social network to get in front of that demographic.
These days, now that some millennials are pushing the big four-oh, Snap has expanded the definition of what it refers to as the “Snapchat generation” to include Gen Z.
Aging up
Still, Snapchat’s user base is broader than it often gets credit for, said Patrick Harris, who joined Snap as SVP of partnerships in May after nearly 12 years in executive roles at Meta.
“We’re actually aging up,” said Harris, now Snap’s president of the Americas and of partnerships. (He was promoted in September, taking over from former Microsoft exec Rob Wilk, who left the president job after just six months.)
Snapchat, whose daily active users exceeded 400 million for the first time last quarter, claims to reach people between the ages of 16 and 64 in the US who use the app on a daily basis and aren’t easily reachable elsewhere.
Although time spent on Snapchat is reportedly falling among teenagers aged 11 to 17, an October report by consumer research firm GlobalWebIndex, commissioned by Snap, found that 53% of Snapchat users over the age of 16 don’t use YouTube every day. Forty-three percent don’t use TikTok, and 32% don’t fire up Instagram daily.
The challenge is getting that point to resonate with media buyers.
“When we’re in the room with people, we can demystify some of what you might call myths that have been associated with us and also get them to retry us and retest us,” Harris said. “We really just need the opportunity to tell our story and explain the improvements we’ve made to our ad platform.”
Snappy revamp
These improvements, made over the past year, include implementing new privacy-focused measurement solutions (like Snap’s own conversions API), integrating with and testing Apple’s SKAdNetwork 4.0, and updating Snapchat’s machine learning algorithms to prioritize click-through conversions.
Snap was motivated to make these adjustments by a now-familiar tale: signal (and revenue) loss as a result of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework.
“The changes we introduced to our ad platform were super-disruptive to the business, although it was the right decision in the long term to make sure we have a durable system for the future,” Harris said. “But what’s interesting is that we’re also starting to see that what’s old is new again.”
Creative, for example, is becoming as important as audience targeting in light of signal loss, he said. So Snap has been prioritizing partnerships with creative studios and digital creative-focused tech providers, including VidMob and Whalar.
“It’s all about continuing to accelerate performance in a post-ATT world,” Harris said, “and I think we’re making progress.”
Howdy, partners
It’s Harris’ job to keep that momentum going by scaling Snap’s global agency and partnerships business and by striking new partnership deals, including with ad tech companies.
Last summer, Snap laid off 20% of its workforce as part of a restructuring to focus on what CEO Evan Spiegel referred to as “three strategic priorities”: user growth, augmented reality and revenue growth.
With that plan in mind, Snap made three key hires for its revenue team over the past two months to bolster its ad tech relationships:
- Former Reddit and Pinterest exec Carlos Tejuco, as head of business development for the ad platform, commerce and payments.
- Former Twitter and VidMob exec Greg Lieber, as head of revenue partnerships for North America.
- David Shaw, for his second tour at Snap, as head of revenue partnerships for Europe after stints at Reddit and TikTok.
Expanding Snap’s relationship with players in the ad tech ecosystem is “a real nascent opportunity for us,” Harris said.
“We’re looking at all of the different third-party technology partners that know how to reach sophisticated advertisers that care about performance,” he said. “These are advertisers that may be less directly familiar with our offerings and our audience right now.”
Snap is also attempting to reposition itself as a channel for direct response campaigns, rather than just an upper-funnel branding vehicle, which is how a lot of advertisers view the platform. It’s been investing in machine-learning infrastructure to improve ad platform ranking and optimization.
The plan appears to be working.
After declines earlier this year, Snapchat’s direct response business grew by a modest 3% YOY in Q3 (and 10% quarter over quarter).
“Historically, we’ve been a very brand-centric business, that’s true,” Harris said, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t also be a lower-funnel performance-driven business and help people achieve their outcomes.”
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