Snapchat challenges Meta’s monopoly with a major update that opens up users' private chat feeds. With the new Sponsored Snaps, ambitious e-commerce and B2C brands can now land directly in their target audience's inbox. Read along to get the strategic perspective on how to leverage this format to diversify your media mix and lower your CPA.
Snapchat has just rolled out one of the most significant updates in the platform’s history. They are opening up the absolute most private, most used, and highest-converting space in the app: the Chat feed.
With the introduction of Sponsored Snaps and AI Sponsored Snaps, commercial advertising is moving out of irrelevant “Discovery” tabs. Now, brands will land directly in users’ inboxes—side by side with messages from their closest relations.
For ambitious B2C and e-commerce brands, this represents a rare, day-one opportunity to capture undisturbed attention.
The format functions exactly like an unopened snap from a friend. There are no disruptive push notifications, which respects the user experience, but the placement at the heart of the app ensures skyrocketing open rates. In fact, the Chat tab is where over 85% of Snapchat’s users spend time daily.
The real game-changer is the integration of conversational AI directly into the inbox. Users don’t just open a static ad; they can initiate a direct, two-way dialogue with your brand’s AI agent without ever leaving the chat.
Why is a Snapchat update even relevant to an overall marketing strategy? Because it solves a critical vulnerability that many B2C companies are currently suffering from: overexposure on Meta and Google.
When you allocate 80-90% of your performance budget to the same Meta feed, your business becomes extremely vulnerable to Meta’s rising CPMs and fluctuating algorithms. The solution is media diversification.
By utilizing Snapchat’s new chat formats, you achieve:
Before you shift budgets from your existing channels over to the new Snapchat format, your foundation needs to be in place. This requires three things:
The window to grab cheap market shares on a brand-new, organically integrated ad format is closing fast. The battle for the inbox is on.
At Iternum Digital, we are testing the new Snapchat formats in practice right now. If you want a data-driven evaluation of whether your business should execute on this opportunity to lower your overall CPA, reach out to me directly here on LinkedIn or book a strategic review of your channel split.
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