Snapchat Launches Ads Certification Program

Snapchat has announced the launch of Focus, their new module-based training for advertisers and brands. Dubbed as the place for “everything you need to know about Snapchat ads,” the addition comes amidst a growth push for both users and app abilities.

“Our new learning portal, Snap Focus, is our most up-to-date resource and destination to learn about the latest and greatest from Snapchat and the community who uses it. This will help advertisers and agencies master our platform and stay on top of everything Snapchat advertising has to offer.” – Snapchat Announcement

Focus Areas of Training

When you login, you are taken to the main dashboard, which lists the 6 main course areas and additional resources. Users can access it as a drop-down in the Resources section, or by visiting focus.snapchat.com.

The six courses are grouped as follows:

• Intro to Snapchat: What Snapchat is, how the camera works, and how people watch content
• The Snapchat Generation: The “why” of Snapchat, and details about user values and behaviors
• Advertising on Snapchat: How to get results, brand safety, and measure outcomes
• Getting Started on Ads Manager: Campaigns, Ad sets, how to design and publish ads
• Creative Best Practices: Details around best practices, collection ads, filters, and lenses
• Measure and Optimize Campaigns: Optimizations, insights, and reporting options

Courses are laid out with visual examples, screenshots, and text.

Should Advertisers Bother With Focus Training?

While the content is fairly basic, it’s a good place to start if you’ve never used Snap ads.

As a smaller piece of the advertising pie with a very defined demographic, Snap Ads tend to not get as much coverage and training as the 800lb gorillas like Facebook or Google.

If you’re already using Snap Ads, it may give you some things to consider that you hadn’t yet, and expand your testing.

The certification itself probably means very little at the present time, so this would be more for your own knowledge than street cred by being certified.

Why Should Advertisers Pay Attention?

It does signal that Snap is slowly and steadily pushing to get more ad dollars. As the younger demographics continue to abandon Facebook and older demographics start embracing Instagram, Snapchat has maintained its small but mighty hold on the younger demographic.

It’s also posting stronger numbers, aided even moreso by the need for people to connect more during quarantine amidst Covid-19.

At Snap’s Partner Summit, they shared stats behind the growth they’re seeing:

• 170m users are using augmented reality (called “AR”) on Snapchat daily, a large three-year growth trend versus the 55m number in 2017.
• 40% increase year over year in consumption of “Discover” content
• Multiple new features including voice command for filters, Local lenses, expansion of Lens types to add identification abilities for things like plant types and dog breeds, Places listings on maps, and much  more.

Snapchat reaches 90% of the 13 to 24-year-old population in the US, with the average user spending over 30 minutes a day on the platform. They also point out that Gen Z and millenials have over $1 trillion in buying power and these age groups are finding the brands they are likely to stick with for many years to come.

This is in addition to the ad platform’s growth, which includes recent roll out worldwide of dynamic ads commercials on their original programming.

Snap’s statement about the release of Snap Focus can be read here.