Momentum for Mobile Apps

The best of Snap 👻 in your App; the best for your App on Snap 📱

“The most valuable consumer organizations of the 20th century were often real-estate based: Sears, Walmart, the Yankees, Stanford, Disney. Things have changed, but not really. The most valuable consumer firms of this century are also real-estate based: the icons on your smartphone’s home screen are the most valuable firms in the world.”

- Scott Galloway, 2018¹

In the modern era, Apps have become the means with which we connect to the world. We use them to manage our finances, order food, find transportation, stay entertained and even date. Communication has always been core to the mobile experience too, but now it’s enhanced through visual communication through apps like Snapchat which allow us to feel more connected to our friends and family. Apps make it possible for your favorite brand, service, or best friend to be within arm’s reach, which is why at Snap we’ve believed in, invested in, and grown solutions for App developers from the earliest days of our company.

We’re upholding our momentum in mobile by introducing several exciting new product developments for Apps today. These complementary solutions underpin our relentless focus on helping brands express themselves in fun, innovative ways, while at the same time, never losing sight of what it means to impact the bottom line. Our progress was recently marked by our recognition in the latest AppsFlyer Performance Index, an industry-leading report that provides the most in-depth look at the mobile and app marketing landscape: we secured top four rankings for App Purchases and Retention on iOS and Android globally.

As the Snapchat community continues to grow, so too will our efforts to offer more sophisticated solutions to reach our highly engaged audience. Today’s announcements are centered around two pillars:

Bringing the best of Snapchat into your App through experiences that will keep your users inspired and engaged.
Bringing what’s best for your App to Snap, with ad products that will drive retention, LTV and maximum ROAS in Snapchat campaigns.

The Best of Snap 👻 in your App 📱

Democratizing AR through Creative Kit: Over 180 million Snapchatters engage with AR everyday which is up a staggering 37% from the previous year.² AR is no longer a novelty, and we want all developers to share in all the creativity and utility that the Snap Camera can bring. There are two main features in Creative Kit: Stickers and Dynamic Lenses. Stickers can be applied to Snaps post-capture, to give friends more context about what they’re doing or where they are. Dynamic Lenses provide a way to share variable information, like live scores after leveling up in a game or the local weather, through easy-to-build AR experiences:

Free, frictionless login: Our Login Kit is a perfect complement to our user acquisition solutions, making onboarding more seamless and cost effective right after download. Login Kit allows users to leverage their Snapchat credentials to sign into your app, and even bring their Bitmoji along too. We also help you save on costly fees of phone number verification through Verify with Snapchat, a simple, privacy-safe way to check whether the phone number a user just typed into Login Kit matches the phone number associated with their Snapchat Account. See how Hily boosted their registrations by 20% with Login Kit here.

What’s Best for your App 📱 on Snap 👻

AR for DR: Our Augmented Reality Lenses have long been the most immersive, engaging, and unique way that brands can connect with Snapchatters. Despite its beginnings as a vehicle for branding and awareness, we always understood the potential for this format to deliver against Direct Response (DR) goals. App Advertisers focused on user acquisition can now optimize their Lens campaigns towards installs as their primary KPI. Similar to Snap Ads, simply set a desired cost-per-install bid, and our system will work to achieve that outcome. This represents a “complete” performance stack for user acquisition with Lenses: measurement, targeting, ad formats, and finally optimization.

Driving retention: With millions of Apps available in App Stores these days, it’s no a surprise that the average smartphone user has dozens of apps on their phone but spends 84% of their time with just the top five.³ What’s more eye-opening is that about 95% of users ending up churning within the first 30 days.⁴ With all the effort that goes into acquiring a user, it’s incredibly important to retain them. We now have the perfect complement to UA, a brand new objective called ‘App Conversions’. In this dedicated campaign flow, you’ll find an improved deep link ad format to elicit more engagement, the ability to create custom audiences based on the different actions they take in-app, and new goal-based bidding options so you can optimize towards repeat actions, such as Opens and Purchases (and is supported by MMPs). *Note: available early December.

Maximizing return: Our most sophisticated bid strategy yet, Minimum ROAS, has been months in the making. This bid strategy allows you to reach the highest spending Snapchatters on our platform by setting a specific return-on-ad-spend. Browsing and buying on mobile is second nature to our audience, and now you have more ways to control your desired profitability. Tophattter, a live auction shopping app, achieved a +125% ROAS on day zero with this bid type.

What mobile may lack in ‘real-estate’, is more than made up for with the convenience, connectivity and creativity that Apps bring to our everyday lives. Our team will stay committed to bringing the best of Snap to Apps across the globe, while building what’s best for your App to drive success.

Begin your success story today!

Create your first ad in less than five minutes, with just a photo and a few clicks. Reach an engaged audience that lives only on Snapchat, and drive results to build and scale your business.