What you need to know

• Snap says it dominates the 13 to 40 cohort in Australia in the highly competitive smartphone app ad market, and it highlights what it calls robust protections for children, and an environment that makes people happier.
• Snap ANZ Managing Director Tony Keusgen acknowledges Snap can longer trade-off of its new kids on the block appeal - that crown has passed to TikTok, but as an ex-data guy he is just as comfortable quoting numbers, including a 3000% increase in conversion performance for one client.
• He also wants advertisers to understand Snap is not really a social network in the sense that most understand. Instead is a communication platform that people use to share moments that matter "in the moment" with a tight group of friends or family. 
• Most Snapchatters have about 40 connections and a smaller subset they regularly interact with, and that product utility lends itself to a great environment for advertisers.
• He shares research from Altern Agents which found that Snapchatters have a more positive impression of brands after viewing them on Snapchat compared to competitors overall, with a reported 1.3x lift in Brand Favourability compared to competitors.

What Snap managing director Tony Keusgen understood about the popular app before he joined the business in May last year, you could have written on the back of a tweet — and one of those old pre-Elon 140-character tweets at that. And most of that he garnered from watching his own kids' behaviour on the app.

Keusgen is a data industry guy with stints at Quantium, and before that Google, stretching back to 2007.

He says what really struck him when he took the role was the scale of Snapchat in Australia and the critical mass and reach that Snap has already achieved.

One in three Australians have Snapchat on their phones including 80 per cent of 13 to 24-year-olds according to Snap's local chief.

Won't somebody think of the children

There are of course sensitivities around young audiences, particularly the under-18s as platforms like Facebook and TikTok have discovered. In the US both companies are in the firing line over how the younger cohort uses their apps. And so is Snap.

The issue is also a live one in Australia where the Attorney General’s privacy review specifically called it out.

As Mi3 reported in October last when, when the AGD released its report, “It nodded to the 2023 Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey, which found that protecting their children's privacy is a major concern for 79 per cent of Australian parents (makes you wonder about the other 21 per cent, though these may be influencer parents), while the privacy of their children’s personal information was rated as being of high importance to 91 per cent of parents when deciding to provide their child with access to digital devices and service.

According to the AGD's privacy paper, "Children are particularly vulnerable to online harms. Children increasingly rely on online platforms, social media, mobile applications, and other internet-connected devices in their everyday lives. While these services provide many benefits to children and young people, there is concern that children are increasingly being ‘datafied’, with thousands of data points being collected about them, including information about their activities, location, gender, interests, hobbies, moods, mental health, and relationship status."

That led Data Synergies' Peter Leonard to tell Mi3, "It's clear the government is very focused on the protection of children and other vulnerable people, that the clear intention does vary significantly for information relating to children, in particular. Marketing to and targeting children will likely become a thing of the past."

It’s no wonder then that Keusgen believes the investment Snap makes in projecting that audience is an important point of differentiation.

“We have safety measures in place for users in terms of them getting on board and signing into Snap and that age (for joining) is 13+ plus.

“And when our users do join our safety measures are very stringent. For example, with under 18’s the system is very careful about who it enables them to connect with and befriend.”

Pass the dutchie

Even with these protections though, Snap has faced the same kind of congressional scrutiny and criticism in the US as its rivals. In hearings, Senator Laphonza Butler highlighted evidence of children being able to access illegal drugs on the platform, confirming the safety firewall that Snap likes to highlight is not foolproof, let alone child proof.

CEO Evan Spiegel told the hearings, "We work very hard to block all search terms related to drugs from our platform. We proactively look for and detect drug-related content. We remove it from our platform, preserve the evidence, and then we refer it to law enforcement for action. We’ve worked together with nonprofits and with families on education campaigns, because the scale the fentanyl epidemic is extraordinary."

"Over 100,000 people lost their lives last year and we believe people need to know that one pill can kill," he said referencing an anti-drug campaign Snap ran on its own platform. "That campaign was viewed more than 260 million times on Snapchat."

Social, but not social media

Snap’s utility is also different and Keusgen emphasises it is not really a social media platform.

“It is not like traditional social media, in fact it’s not really social media. It's a communications platform where people come to communicate in a fun, friendly, engaging way with people that they know, love, and trust.”

That’s reflected in the customer experience, he says. “When it opens, it opens to a camera readying the user to begin immediately, engaging in communication with their close-knit friends and family.”

 It is a very different approach to that of traditional social media, with its obsession on user self-obsession around “likes” and and other validations.

Keusgen references data from Mindshare’s Worldwide Data Strategy & Insights team in late 2022 which found that 90 per cent of Snapchatters say they feel happier on Snapchat than they feel on other platforms. 

Specifically, the research found: “When it comes to tapping into platforms where users feel happy, Snapchat stands out as a top platform most associated with 'joy.' "

“And I think that's really meaningful,” he said.

He also shared exclusively with Mi3 separate research by Altern Agents which found, “users have more fun and feel more social, happy, connected, creative, and joyful when using Snapchat than competition.”

Among the other findings;

• 73% of social media users agree that Snapchat makes them feel connected with friends and family. 
• 72% of social media users say that Snapchat has features that allow them to have fun with their friends, and family, free of any judgment. 
• 70% of social media users feel net positive emotions when using the app

Keusgen says Snapchatters don’t come to the platform to compete in a popularity contest. The average user has about 40 connections and routinely interacts with a small subset of that number.

But the engagement is high with about 40 interactions a day.

“So they're communicating with their friends and family about the moments that matter to them. One of the most wonderful things about the platform is that it's really what matters to people in their own mindset in their own day that they then share with their friends and family.”

All of this creates the kind of advertising environment where the audience is conducive to a brand's messaging, he says quoting Altern Agents.

“Ads on Snapchat are viewed as 1.3x more positive and 1.2x more playful than ads on other social apps,” according to the research.

Alter Agents also found that Snapchatters have a more positive impression of brands after viewing them on Snapchat compared to competitors overall, with a reported 1.3x lift in Brand Favourability compared to competitors. And it said this is especially true when comparing lifts in Brand Favourability over TikTok and YouTube in Australia, and performing on par with Instagram.

Life begins under 40

What is less well understood about the platform is that 45 per cent of Snap’s audience is under 40, and he argues that Snap owns that demographic.

“We've got reach. And we've got the specificity of under 40s, on Snap. And they’re quite hard to reach if you're a brand or an advertiser.”

So what kinds of activations are brands deploying? 

Keusgen says they are appealing both to buyers with a programmatic focus right through to those looking to build their brand. 

“So a business like HiSmile (an oral hygiene company), they're a really fantastic Australian brand that’s taking over the world and wants to be in more households than any other. Now these marketers are very unemotional around their choice of platform. They just need it to perform so they can reach their own financial metrics. Recently, Hi Smile have re-engaged with Snap to test out the performance capabilities of our platform.”

He claims recent campaigns have delivered last-click conversion increases of over 3000 per cent.

In a Snap case study on the campaign, HiSmile revealed that by driving new qualified customers to their website they were able to achieve a 15 per cent increase in revenue.

At the other end of the advertising philosophy scale, Uber Eats ran campaigns looking for brand uplift.

“They use that reservation platform. So, you can buy, for example, the first ad unit that every user will see on that day. Their objective was to reach as many over-18s in one day as possible, and they reached over 2.08 million over 18’s in one day. in one day,”

He said, “Uber was really focused on brand uplift. And they're really focused on attention. And so their metrics in terms swipe up rates that they measure, were far above the standard benchmarks.”

According to Andy Morley, Director of Marketing at Uber & Uber Eats, Aus & NZ, "[Snapchat's] formats such as AR lens and First Story are important drivers of both awareness and consideration as we evolve to a platform that can get you almost, almost anything."

"Uber leveraged two First Story ads to run the activity, targeted to their key audience of 18+ adults. The creative was split across the two ads, featuring high-profile talent, including Kris and Kendall Jenner, and three iconic Aussies. According to the companies, "First Story allowed the brand to generate high reach, whilst capturing the engagement of their brand for further retargeting to support their consideration focus, achieving 2.08M reach in 24 hours¹, 205K video views² and a swipe up rate of 1.3 per cent."