Snapchat Ads Case Study: Expert Campaign Management in an Automated Landscape

Social media advertising platforms continue to push automation at the expense of user control. Most platforms consistently release huge updates that take power away from an advertiser at the promise of “better performance.”

Platforms are trying to convince the public that anyone can advertise on these platforms. While this makes social media advertising more accessible, it creates a significant business risk. It leaves a lot of revenue on the table for advertisers who don’t know how to maximize performance and make their media work harder.

The importance of active trading in marketing cannot be understated. A proper trading team is equipped with valuable platform expertise and business knowledge. This manual control of active traders allows businesses to maximize their rewards.

When running campaigns within social platforms, a full trading team ensures complete coverage and constant eyes on all efforts. A proper team is a specialized group of media buyers and analysts that manage digital advertising campaigns.

These specialists have extensive knowledge in running and optimizing social campaigns. Traders leverage advanced bidding strategies, testing, and performance analysis to maximize client ROI.

By maintaining manual control where necessary and nimbly adapting to platform changes, a skilled trading team ensures that campaigns align with business objectives. They also mitigate the risks of fully automated solutions.

Within social efforts, keeping AI accountable starts with monitoring KPI trends. It’s easy to get comfortable trusting the algorithm or setting “limits” that ultimately are not upheld. Performance quickly gets out of control.

Seeing large jumps in controllable metrics (aka goal metrics) is an indication it might be time to step in. For example, let’s say you’re running a CPC campaign in TikTok, and you notice your CPC jump from $2 to $5 over two weeks. It would be a good idea to switch to a manual approach and try to bring this cost back down.

For an auto insurance client with Scale Marketing, Snapchat has consistently been a key piece in the marketing mix. It reaches a younger demographic looking to purchase their first policy.

Snapchat Ads offers a range of automated features that promise to maximize performance and KPIs with less labor from the user. One of these features is automated bidding, which has been key in maintaining low CPMs across social platforms. The algorithm automatically adjusts bids to remain competitive.

CPMs directly impact all other metrics down the line within our social platforms. Lower CPMs means more impressions within budgets, which leads to more opportunities for views, clicks, leads, or conversions.

At the start of February, however, CPMs began to rise to as high as 65% of the previous month’s average.

Rather than dismissing this as a case of rising competition or a short term issue, Scale took back bidding control from the platform. Immediately, performance improved exponentially. CPMs dipped from an $11.53 average at the start of February to a $5.73 average, a 50% decrease.

With the CPM decrease, there was no negative change to performance metrics. Video view rate remained stagnant, as well as video completion rate. In fact, cost per completed view dropped 48%.

Manual bidding does add labor and time, but the shift in performance is undeniable. It brought awareness to an important focal point for the trading team moving forward. As a performance agency, Scale is dedicated to testing the capabilities of both manual and automated bidding solutions. That combination and awareness helps us stay competitive and drive the best results for clients.

Automation within digital marketing channels is only going to become more prevalent. That’s not a bad thing. Many changes will allow users to focus their time on bigger priorities while more mundane tasks can be automatically managed.

That said, it’s important to not get comfortable with this automation. Keeping a constant pulse on ad accounts and holding the platform accountable is the key to maximizing results. If automation fails to produce results, take back full control.

Without a trading team in place to balance and oversee, it’s easy for platforms to get away with dips in performance without being caught. Investing in experienced digital marketers can significantly enhance your advertising effectiveness. They ensure that every dollar spent is optimized for maximum return, which means better business results for you.