It's a decades old marketing question: “How much money do I invest in Brand campaigns vs. performance campaigns?” With all the pressure on efficiency and profitability in recent times, brands are working to get the most from their marketing dollars. Marketers today are looking to drive full-funnel impact, but can your Brand campaigns actually achieve lower funnel outcomes? These were the questions Snapchat looked to answer for the Financial Services industry in the US.
Snapchat commissioned a meta-analysis with TransUnion, using their proprietary marketing mix models (MMM), to evaluate the Return on Ad Spends (ROAS) in driving sales and to specifically look at how brand and performance campaigns work together. Snap is highly supportive of MMM efforts of brands, and we partner with key third-party MMM suppliers to ensure campaign outputs include the granularity and specificity to properly measure Snapchat’s advertising contribution to sales and return on investment.
Using MMM data from TransUnion that encompasses 3+ years of data for US Financial Services brands, TransUnion analyzed 15 advertisers across 14 media channels. And what did they find out? Snapchat contributes disproportionately more marketing-driven sales relative to the amount of budget it receives. That is to say that the investment put into Snapchat is disproportionately lower than the marketing-driven sales in contributions - by 1.3X the Financial Services benchmark!
But what does that mean for advertisers? Snapchat pulls its weight (and then some!) when it comes to return on ad spend (ROAS). Snapchat exceeds Paid Social (in aggregate) and in comparison to nearly every other channel. Financial services brands should expect positive, disproportionate ROAS when they invest in Snapchat.
Over the past three years, Financial Services campaigns on Snapchat have been roughly split by share of spend. Although we expect DR campaigns to be efficient, we found that Brand campaigns were also efficient and drive higher than average ROAS with an even larger footprint in the industry mix.
Not only that, but Brand campaigns have a strong impact on intermediate funnel outcomes, such as app installs or website conversions. And when run in tandem, Brand and DR campaigns generate a 3% lift compared to average Snapchat indexed ROAS, demonstrating that they work better together than when they are run in isolation.
Further analysis by TransUnion revealed that Snapchat is currently being underinvested by up to 28% among FinServ brands. To maximize marketing-driven sales attributable to Snap, an increase in 27% spend for Brand campaigns and a 28% increase in DR campaigns are still needed.
To learn more about how to drive lower funnel results through your brand’s Brand and Direct Response campaigns, reach out to your Snap sales rep or marketing sciences partner.