An Ultimate Guide to Snapchat Ads for 2026

Snapchat ads have become a go-to solution for e-commerce merchants looking to promote their products or build brand awareness on the platform. These ads enable businesses to target a massive audience of Gen Z and millennials with precision, based on their interests, behaviors, location, and other factors. 

As the number 1 platform where users love sharing their shopping experiences and recent purchases, Snapchat offers brands a unique opportunity to gain significant visibility. By running ads on the platform, your products can easily integrate into users’ daily interactions, increasing exposure and driving meaningful engagement.

But the real question is, how to run Snapchat ads? Which steps should you follow when setting them up? And are there any best practices to follow? 

To answer these and many other questions, we have written this article. Through this guide, we will discuss: 

1. What are Snapchat Ads
2. Types of Snapchat ads 
3. The different steps to follow for creating Snapchat ads, such as creating a Snapchat Business Account, setting up your campaign, etc.  
4. Benefits of running these ads and much more. 

So, are you ready? Let’s start. 

What are Snapchat Ads?  

Snapchat ads are paid promotional content displayed within the Snapchat app experience. These ads can appear in various formats, including images, videos, and augmented reality (AR) effects, and are shown across multiple placements such as Publisher Stories, User Stories, Spotlight, and more.

In practice, Snapchat ads operate on an auction-based system similar to other major advertising platforms like Meta and Google. Advertisers create campaigns using Snapchat Ads Manager, choose their campaign objectives, define their target audience, and place bids for ad placements. Based on these settings, Snapchat’s advertising system matches ads with the most relevant placements where they are likely to perform best. Over time, the platform continuously optimizes ad delivery by learning from user behavior and engagement patterns.

In short, Snapchat ads enable businesses to reach their target audience in a highly immersive and engaging way, one that feels natural and native to the Snapchat platform.

Different Snapchat Ad Formats

Let’s also look at the different types of Snapchat ad formats.

1. Sponsored Snaps: Sponsored Snaps are a newer ad format that allows brands to send promotional Snaps directly to users’ inboxes. Recipients can reply to these Snaps, making the experience highly interactive.

2. Single Image or Video Ads: These ads feature a single image or video and are ideal for promoting a product, offer, or brand message. They can appear in Stories and Spotlight ad placements. 

3. Story Ads: Within Story ads, you can showcase users a series of images or videos. They are very helpful for sparking curiosity and driving engagement. 

4. Collection Ads: Collection Ads consist of a single image or video paired with four clickable product tiles beneath it. This format enables you to highlight multiple products from your catalog at once, making it particularly effective for e-commerce brands looking to drive product discovery and sales.

5. Commercials: Commercials are video ads that appear within Snap’s curated content. They are of two types: 

• Standard Commercials, which are non-skippable video ads lasting 3–6 seconds.
• Extended Play Commercials, which are longer video ads ranging from 7 to 180 seconds, with the first 6 seconds being non-skippable.

6. AR Lenses: AR Lenses, or Snapchat Lenses, enable users to interact with immersive augmented reality ads within their Snapchat cameras. They are great for boosting brand awareness, engagement, and conversions. 
7. AR Filters: AR filters allow users to add your brand’s custom filter to their everyday snaps. Just like the AR Lenses format, even these ads are ideal for boosting brand awareness, engagement, and conversions. 

Pro tip: Visit this Snapchat page to learn more about these ad formats.

How to Create Snapchat Ads? 

Snapchat allows you to create ads in two ways: 

1. Automatic Page View Campaign (Recommended): In this option, Snapchat uses its advanced data intelligence to create and optimize your campaign automatically. Most settings are handled by the platform, making it ideal for beginners or advertisers looking for a faster setup.
2. Manual Build: This option allows you to create a campaign from scratch, giving you full control over targeting, placements, bidding, and creative elements.

We will look at the step-by-step process for both methods below. However, before that, let’s also look at the prerequisites for launching Snapchat Ads. 

Prerequisites For Creating and Launching Snapchat Ads

1. Snapchat Ads Manager Account
2. A Business Account 
3. A Public Profile 

Automatic Page View Campaign (Recommend)

1. Open your Ads Manager Account.
2. From the top-left corner of your dashboard, expand the menu. 
3. Under ‘Advertise’, click on ‘Create Ads.’  This will take you to Snapchat’s campaign creation flow.
4. Within that flow, first, you will have to select your ad’s objective. You can select from: 

• Awareness & Engagement 
• Traffic 
• Leads
• App Promotion 
• Sales 

Once done, click on ‘Next.’ 

5. Then you will have to select how to create your campaign. Choose ‘Automatic Page View Campaign’ and click on ‘Next.’
6. You will then reach the actual campaign creation page. On top of it, you will see an option to view the presets. These are the ad campaign settings (such as format, performance goal, etc.) that Snapchat would have already configured for you based on your advertising objective. 

7. After that, you might have to add your business address and payment method, depending on whether you have already provided this information or not. 
8. Then, you will have to design your ad. This means selecting a public profile to link to, adding a headline and CTA, and specifying your website URL. 

9. Add Media. 

Note: Snapchat can also load media (assets) from your linked website. However, they should meet its requirements. Or else, the upload will fail, and you will have to add photos or videos or select from the library manually.

10. Then configure Audience settings and set a budget for your campaign. 
11. Click on ‘Publish.’ 

The ad creation process will be successful. 

Manual Build 

After you reach the fifth step of the campaign creation flow (which we have already discussed above), select ‘Manual Build.’

💡When creating ads manually, you can track the campaign creation flow and your progress in real time from the left-hand side of the Ads Manager dashboard.

1. Start by configuring all settings at the campaign level. This means you must: 

• Add your campaign name.
• Set its status. 
• Enable split tests (if required). 
• Define the campaign start and end dates.
• Set daily and lifetime spend caps. 
• Choose if you want to promote places. 
• Enable Smart Budget and Measure With SKAdNetwork (if required). 

2. Next, move on to configuring settings at the ad set level. Here, you’ll need to: 

• Adding an ad set name and setting its status. 
• Selecting if you want to track the campaign with a Snap Pixel or Snap App ID. 
• Choosing a performance goal and bidding strategy from ‘Auto-Bid’ or ‘Max Bid.’
• Setting a daily or lifetime budget, and also start and end dates if they differ from your campaign schedule.  
• Selecting placements where your ads can appear across Snapchat. It is during this step that you can also select an appropriate brand suitability feature. 
• Defining audiences. 
• Adding a frequency cap (if required).
• Implementing third-party tagging (if required). 

Pro tip: Read how to install a Snap Pixel on Shopify.

3. After setting up your campaign and building ad sets, you will reach the ad level. At this level, you must:

• Name your ad.
• Choose one eligible format.
• Set up ad creatives. This means add creative assets, website URL, CTAs, headlines, etc. 
• Enable partnership ads (if required).
• Enable Discover Tile (if required). 
• Create a Message Design. 
• Configure delivery settings. 

4. Once you complete this setup process, click on ‘Review and Publish.’

And that’s it! Your Snapchat Ad will be ready. 

How to View and Analyze Snapchat Ad Campaign Performance Reports? 

The native and most common method of viewing ad campaign performance in Snapchat is through the Manage Ads dashboard and table. It is a default view of your Snapchat Ads Manager account, which: 

• Allows you to manage or create new campaigns, and
• Provides you with quick access to key metrics and insights related to the performance of your ad campaigns. 

You can open it by navigating to the menu in the top-left corner of your Ads Manager account and going to Advertise > Manage Ads. 

On the main dashboard, you will see a graph. It will highlight performance trends for any particular campaign, ad set, or ad for the selected date range. You will also get to see important metrics such as total spend, paid impressions, paid eCPM, etc. 

Below the graph, you will have the option to select whether you want to view the performance for a campaign, ad set, or ad. Moreover, here you will also find a tabular overview of status, delivery status, and other metrics for your selected level.

Note: By ‘Selected level’ we mean campaign, ad set, or ad.

We recommend that to measure the real effectiveness of your ad campaigns (or their corresponding elements), you review the following performance metrics on this dashboard:  

1. Amount Spent: Total amount of money spent on the entire campaign, ad set, or ad. Reviewing this metric will help you understand how your ad budget is being used and if it aligns with the results you are getting. 
2. Clicks: The total number of clicks that took Snapchat users to the ad’s destination. Useful for measuring the interest of users and how well your ad(s) encourage users to take action. 
3. Paid Impressions: These will help you understand how many times your ad was shown to Snapchat users. Using it, you can measure the reach of your campaigns.
4. Profile Clicks: Shows the total clicks on your public profile from your ads. It’s a great metric that indicates brand interest and how many users are interested in learning more about you. 
5. eCPC: Effective cost-per-click, which is measured by dividing the ad spend by the number of clicks delivered. 

Helps to analyze how efficiently you are generating traffic, with lower values indicating the success of your advertising efforts. 

6. Landing Page Views: The total number of times a Snapchat user loads your ad’s landing page after clicking on an ad. 

Landing page views are useful for tracking high-intent traffic and the quality of your clicks. 

Note:  1. The list of metrics shared above isn’t exhaustive. Moreover, the available metrics can also change depending on your advertising objective and Snapchat ad format. Above, we have just shared a general overview of metrics that apply across multiple ad formats. However, we recommend that with due diligence, you track those metrics that support your campaign objective and reflect the actions you want users to take.  2. The Manage ads dashboard or table isn’t the only method to view campaign performance in Snapchat. You can also generate custom reports by going to Analyze (from the menu in the top-left corner of your Ads Manager account) > Reports.  Additionally, you can also use third-party tools that integrate with Snapchat for deeper insights and advanced reporting for your specific needs.

Benefits of Running Snapchat Ads

With that, we will now discuss the advantages of running ads on Snapchat. 

1. Reach a Young, Active User Base: Snapchat reaches 90% of all users in the age group of 13-24 and 75% of all 13-34 year-olds in the US itself. This gives your business an opportunity to connect and market your products to a younger audience, which might be hard to reach on platforms like Facebook, Google, etc. 
2. High-Engagement via Immersive Ad Formats: Snapchat offers several highly interactive and immersive ad formats, such as AR Lenses and Filters. These formats encourage users not just to view ads, but to interact with them and share them with others. As a result, advertisers often see higher engagement rates and stronger brand recall.
3. Flexible Budget Options For All Business Sizes: On Snapchat, you can start advertising with a budget as low as $5. This flexibility makes it accessible for businesses of all sizes to test campaigns, scale successful ads, and continuously optimize performance without a large upfront investment.

Bonus: Read our blog on ‘How much do Snapchat ads cost?’

4. Centralized Platform Creating and Managing Ads Simply: Snapchat Ads Manager is a self-serve platform that lets you create, launch, manage, and monitor ad campaigns from a single dashboard. The streamlined interface eliminates the need for complex setups and makes campaign management straightforward even for beginners.
5. Advanced Targeting: With Snapchat ads, you can target users based on different factors such as age, gender, location, etc. Not only that, but you can also use the Snap pixel to retarget website visitors and track valuable conversion actions. 

This ensures that your ads always reach the right set of users (who are more likely to take an action or convert) and also deliver strong results.

Best Practices For Creating and Running Snapchat Ads

Let’s also explore some best practices for creating and running Snapchat ads. 

1. Always Follow Snapchat Ad Specifications: Snapchat has certain specifications for each ad format. For example: 

• Sponsored Snaps should be in the 9:16 aspect ratio and 720×1280 resolution. 
• For single-image or video ads, the headlines can be of up to 34 characters with spaces, and so on. 

Ensure that your creatives meet these requirements. This will help you get your ads approved faster and allow Snapchat’s ad systems to display them in the best possible manner across all eligible placements.  

2. Implement Snap Pixel and Conversions API (CAPI): To get deeper insights into what actions users take on your website after interacting with your ads, we recommend implementing the Snap Pixel and CAPI. 

Both of these will provide you with reliable marketing data that you can use to optimize your campaigns better and boost conversions. 

3. Leverage Audience Insights: Snapchat’s Audience Insights allow you to learn more about users who view and engage with your ads. By analyzing data such as age, gender, interests, locations, and device usage, you can build more relevant audiences and refine your targeting strategy for improved performance.
4. Make Your Ads Feel Native to Snapchat: Snapchat recommends using short, bite-sized storytelling for your ads, just like Snaps, and keeping the ad duration around 5-6 seconds. This will allow your ads to reach potential customers in a way that feels non-intrusive and native to the Snapchat experience, thereby boosting engagement. 
5. Add Audio to All Snapchat Ads: 64% of Snapchat users view ads with sound on. Thus, ensure that you add clear voiceovers, music, or even testimonials (highly recommended) to make your ads engaging and explain your product or service easily to Snapchatters. 

Note: Read about other best practices for Snapchat ads on this page.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways 

Snapchat Ads give e-commerce brands a simple way to reach younger users and promote their products and brand with engaging ad formats.

The key takeaways from this blog include:

• Snapchat Ads help you reach a large audience of Gen Z and millennials who engage daily and enjoy discovering new products.
• The platform offers multiple ad formats, such as Sponsored Snaps, Single Image or Video, etc., that support awareness, engagement, app installs, and sales with flexible creative options.
• You can create Snapchat ads quite easily via the ‘Automatic Page View Campaigns’ setting that automates most campaign settings, or build them manually inside your Ads Manager account.
• All advertisers can review their campaign performance through the ‘Manage Ads’ graph and dashboard using metrics like spend, impressions, clicks, etc.
• Some benefits of running Snapchat ads include the ability to easily reach young audiences, utilize immersive ad formats such as AR Lenses and Filters, and start campaigns without a large ad budget.
• Following best practices like ensuring ad creatives are in compliance with Snapchat’s ad specs, using Audience Insights, adding sound to all ads, and keeping ads native to Snapchat can help your campaigns perform better.

Good luck. 

Also Read: How to Sell on Snapchat?

FAQs

1. How much do Snapchat Ads cost compared to other platforms?

As of January 2025, the average CPM on Snapchat is $8.85, and the average CPL is $1.93. By comparison, Instagram’s averages are $6.70 for CPM and $2 for CPL, while Facebook’s are $14.40 for CPM and $0.44 for CPL. 

While these numbers might make Snapchat appear more expensive, the actual cost depends on your product, target audience, and season. In many cases, Snapchat delivers strong value and can be more cost-effective for reaching younger users.

2. Where can my Snapchat Ads appear on the platform?

Snapchat offers multiple ad placements across the platform, including User Stories, Publisher Stories, Spotlight, Discover Feed, and the Chat Feed. Depending on your campaign goals, you can choose Automatic Placements, where Snapchat optimizes delivery for performance, or manually select specific placements for greater control over where your ads appear.

3. Why aren’t my Snapchat ads delivering?

Your Snapchat ads may fail to deliver if they are paused, not approved, or scheduled outside the active date range. Additionally, even budget limits or payment method issues can stop your ads from running. 

If you are using Dynamic Ads, out-of-stock products in your catalog can also affect delivery.

4. How can I improve the performance of my Snapchat Ads?

You can improve performance by adjusting your bid amounts, refining or broadening your targeting, and testing new creatives. Increasing bids can help boost ad delivery, while more precise targeting and fresh creatives ensure your ads reach the right audience and drive stronger, more consistent results.

5. Does Snapchat support A/B testing for ads?

Yes. Snapchat supports A/B testing through a feature called Split Testing. This feature allows you to compare different versions of your ads, such as creative variations, audiences, placements, or bid strategies, to identify what performs best before scaling your budget.