On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East’s On The Record podcast, Antoine Challita, UAE Country Head, Snap Inc. discusses the importance of understanding the impact of conversational advertising, and how brands are leveraging it to connect with consumers.
“Conversational advertising is an amazing utility for users. Eventually, this is going to drive a lot of value for brands that embrace it. Advertisers and marketers need to understand that technology is going to drive us through different stages of how to use conversational advertising, and the marketers that start early are the ones that are going to reap the benefits of it the most,” Challita says.
He adds, “There are two big milestones in this journey towards unlocking the benefits of conversational advertising. The ongoing shopping season is one of them, and Ramadan is another because it is a beautiful period of connection. Whether it is through conversational advertising, through Sponsored Snaps, or through creator-brand collaborations on the platform, brands have the opportunity to not only ensure creativity in terms of problem solving, but also make sure they are meeting their performance goals, as well.”
The conversation also takes a deep dive into the Chat tab on Snapchat, the reason and the timing behind the launch of Sponsored Snaps, and the impact of conversational touchpoints on the consumers’ path to purchase.
Challita explains, “If we talk about the Chat tab on Snapchat, that’s probably one of the most premium real estate that we have on the platform. This is one of the main reasons people come to the platform – to connect with their communities, family and friends – and this is where we have, on average, 5 billion Snaps per day being shared. On this chat feature, we have a community that is extremely engaged, trusts the environment, has high intent, which opens an opportunity for brands to participate in the conversation. This is why Sponsored Snaps came into being.”
However, while ‘brands enter the chat’, Snap still ensures that this remains non-intrusive and seamlessly integrated into the organic, natural flow of the chat.
Sponsored Snaps that appear on the Snapchatters’ feeds as ads, do not trigger push notifications. Users have to opt-in to view them by opening the ad, and they disappear if left unviewed. These ads are also marked with an “ad” badge to distinguish them from friends’ or family messages.
This ensures that while brands have access to the chat experience, it’s not forced. The user has the option to open a message from a brand – whether it comes in the form a text, a video or as part of a collaboration with a celebrity or content creator.
“It is important not to disrupt the user experience,” Challita adds, “But we’re still providing brands access to that trusted environment.”
Furthermore, discussing the value of conversational advertising through Sponsored Snaps, Challita says, “Conversational advertising is not limited to one stage of the advertising and marketing funnel. This is a place where our platform can facilitate conversations between a brand and high-intent users that affects every stage of the funnel – from discovery to creating consideration to even driving conversion.”
That said, Snapchat has also built an ad engine in the background to make sure that there’s an ad quality factor that’s put into place. If a brand’s advertising is not on par with what the platform believes is relevant to Sponsored Snaps, then eventually the cost of delivering that ad or message to the user is going to land up being quite high and those brands won’t be able to win bids to do so.
“Obviously, we are also here to support our advertisers, helping them understand best practices, and help them figure out what it means to have a native experience on the chat interface of our platform. We need to acknowledge that this is a paradigm shift. This is not an environment that brands are used to. So, we need to be available as partners to enable, educate and share best practices about what really works for our users, and what is relevant within the Chat environment. We have run several tests to ensure that this Chat offer is not only great from an advertiser perspective, but also adds value to the user experience on the platform.”
Through the podcast, Challita also discusses specific successful case studies, brand-safe trends and the ‘timing of talking to consumers’, as well as operationalising the ‘right message to the right person’ by leveraging the right moments that connect communities, without moment-washing, and much more.
For more insights, watch the YouTube video of the full podcast.
