Session: From Installs To Lifetime Value How Snapchat Powers Gaming Growth - Sara Antonelli, Snap.

So, yeah, we're going to hear from Sarah now about um I guess lifetime value and Snapchat and yeah take it away.
It's good to see you all. Uh the last standing ones on close to 5:00 p.m. on a Monday. Um I'm going to take the five minutes extra as uh I have the room because usually it does take me about 20 minutes to go through the whole presentation. So I thought maybe you guys might have some time for extra questions at the end. Uh so we can use that little bit of uh extra time. Um I'm

here with Snapchat today. I'm Sarah Antonelli. I lead up all strategies for apps globally as Snapchat, but it's good to be um homebased. I'm based in London, so it's good to be present at an event that is quite close to my house. Today um I'm going to be speaking to you and I hope that uh it resonates in one way or another uh on how you can actually power grow for your um app gaming app uh with Snapchat. Um to be completely honest in the last year or so and even before that it was quite common for me to hear or know uh meetings that I had with clients and partners and whatn not. A very common challenge which is challenge for how do I diversify my portfolio? how I continue to grow my uh user base and transparently that was also one of the questions that we had internally as an

app. So we went through a year of um um almost a revolution I would say from an app perspective in terms of both our ad stack but as well as we look at our product internally and that led us to actually take a lot of initiatives to let both from a growth standpoint internally as well as externally and that was helpful to help our partners to also drive growth for the uh for the particular businesses. And I understand you know as time goes by and the industry does change um we face ourselves with different challenges. Um and for us it was quite the same and so we based off our strategy in four different pillars. One obviously for you to be able to succeed you do have to have an audience that is scalable enough. And then once you deal with that audience all that you need is what is my bread and butter which is performance right? So you have to have

performancedriven solutions. You have to have accuracy when it comes to measurement. And then finally you also have to have um an easy on boarding uh especially in a word that it relies on automation alone. Something that is very cumbersome something that takes a lot of time. It just also bleeds money for the business itself. So everything has to become uh automated in the in the ecosystem and in the space. So why you might ask why is NAP? As I said, we went through the exact same journey. At one point, we believed that perhaps not diversifying our ecosystem on basing our revenue and our growth on ads alone, we needed to diversify on how we actually ingested revenue for Snapchat. And we [clears throat] developed our own partnerships ecosystem. So uh bridging from not being uh solely uh solely an app ecosystem [clears throat] to then now also have subscriptions which was a

very successful um project internally and we continue to double down on that and with less than a year of launch of our um partnerships [clears throat] we already have 15 million Snapchat that are subscribers so they're paying users for the platform itself and We already achieved 700 million in AIR for direct revenue on the last year alone. Um on top of that we base that particular segment that was driving a lot of growth and we powered into our ad stack and our ecosystem to actually build better um performance solutions for our advertisers that were also to advertise as Snapchat. And with that we came to market to say we launched those particular solutions called the app power pack. And on a top line alone we were able to see a 25% lift in app installs if you care about midfunnel and driving volume. But

essentially what we care about it's going to be on the conversion side which we saw uh 18% uplift in unique converters. And here's what I wanted to double down and explain to you why the launch of the power pack has been so successful for us and for the advertisers that are also partnering with us uh to drive growth for their business too. And obviously not to say we might defer in terms of the verticals itself but Snapchat has a huge synergy with gaming. So I wanted to double down on why the audience is particular interest particularly interesting for uh the gaming category or the gaming vertical. First of all, we have to speak about scale. And maybe there's a surprising factor for some of you in the room that you might not know that Snapchat has a lot of scale. And we are at the number of four uh 9.3 million u monthly active users and we are on track

to actually be the one billion before half the first half of the year. Actually, maybe even in the last two weeks with people the churn is coming back to the to the to the app to build their 2016 for example memories, we might have already hit that hit that number. And in terms of the use also, we have daily active users that are opening the app at least 40 times a day to speak to their friends and family and people that they care about the most within the chat feed. And this particular audience at scale, they're not only interested on perhaps e-commerce or brand as you might think, but they're actually gamers. So the synergy is quite big. When we talk about the Snapchat, Snapchatters that are using gaming apps daily, we hit the 78% mark. And a lot of those users uh also they do play games and they are within the gaming apps u multiple times a day.

So they are gamers in their core and their categories. Um and not only that but actually they come to the app to discover new trends to talk about with their friends on what games they're playing, what is new within the ecosystem and how they can actually share experiences and what they're being on uh and about within their day-to-day basis. And not only that, obviously we do also care for purchasing power. So what is obviously a user that you can not only drive the install but can also drive your lifetime value and drive uh particular performance and growth for your partic for your title itself. So 36% as I said of our users they're actually paying users for the snap uh app. So signaling that they do have purchasing power. But not only that, a even more significant number, we see that 50% of Snapchatters actually had

made an inapp purchase uh from an ad that they saw on Snap and then eventually went to install the the the app and uh drove a purchase later down the funnel. And to uh kind of close within the uh audience piece, I want to say that not only the audience is quite scalable, but it's also incremental. It adds incremental value because you might not see the audience anywhere else. So you might not see them or in the same way that they would behave within Facebook or YouTube, Tik Tok and Instagram. So there is an audience with a value of incremental in there. And if you might think that maybe you know Snapchats as they uh might be a little bit down towards the younger side or more the Gen Z which we do have a a high penetration actually one in four Snapchates uh 35 plus I'm 35 myself I actually have my Snapchat account since the very first

time that I downloaded while I was starting at uni. So the retention that we have in terms of users it the users did carry on using the the snap app and they still you know speak to their friends and family and that particular category of users within that date um that that [clears throat] that demographic it carries on until today. So if you think that we might skill only younger, you might want to rethink that because the audiences at scale might also hit that particular demographic that you're looking for that is your core audience for your game. Now on to what I call the bread and butter because obviously audiences as a standalone might not drive anything if you're actually not really optimized towards the performance that you going to need when it comes to making lowerfunnel decisions. impactful and within today day and age when competition is at score maybe UA is hitting some level of plateau and the

industries might be shifting towards um a model that everything that you might have been doing the last few years might not work for the same level of growth that you want to drive today. Uh those particular uh products are going to help you to sustain uh that growth. So we've been on a journey to transform our iPad stack. That took us about a year and a half. But I'm quite proud to say that the changes and the enhancements that we have done in the app stack have been incredible in terms of drive value and result. And they're not only from kind of like inauguration and us really working towards that particular framework that obviously being at school but we also leverage signals really become to be very innovative when it comes to our measurement solutions and how we partner with MMPs and how we partner with uh Scattera ad network as an ecosystem to really drive the value that our customers need. And finally, if

you're only speaking about performance and and measurement, that as a standalone would be your baseline, but it it doesn't come without the effort of actually building formats that are going to drive, you know, the the last click and building formats that are going to drive users attention. So, it has to also be tied as a full funnel from the measurement ecosystem all the way into the creative. So we focus on all of that as fundamentals for us to be able to drive value for our advertisers today. So the first product I would like to mention is the product that has ultimately become BAU for all our global gaming advertisers which is target cost. You know in a word that I know automation is going in towards a way that with other some of our players or competitors what you see is actually you let them control the whole ecosystem. Here we have a solution that actually enables you some level of control but

also it brings efficiency and not only efficiency at scale but also efficiency in terms that you are able to control the way that you want to show up in that stack especially when perhaps auction is more dense and you want to pull back or perhaps in in moments in which there are not global important moments for your app and you don't have that particular standalone that you want to push. push forward and therefore you're able to control the cost of that particular user that you want to serve and when for example Q5 when auction is a little less dense and you really want to scale you want to drive acceleration for the business and the user base that's when you can leverage uh cost efficiency towards solutions as that um essentially that has become the bread and butter for all our gaming advertisers. So if you are advertising your SNAP and haven't tested the solution yet or you're not yet advertising your SNAP, I would definitely advise you to take advantage

so you can understand how you can uh drive results at scale being among your top performance partners with this particular solution today. And this is a clear example of uh one of our rewarded plays uh play games win cash y they were able within the target cost solution to drive 85 84% lower CPIs within their activity 60x uh lower cost per purchases more purchases and 90% lower cost per purchase and six times more first time purchases or what they call the first depositors which was a very interesting case study when they first started testing target cost which eventually became their ever growing their BAU solution. On top of that, when it comes to the the ad stack and the way that we build performance solutions, we also improved the way that the algorithm controls their models and the ranking

and the way that we can really find the right user to deliver the right ad. So we're not wasting budgets, but we're really making sure that those users are going to have an impact wi when driving both the install as well as the conversion. More precise delivery. So we're able to connect your audiences. Exclusions are uh a lot more uh direct and ultimately for advertisers to be able to achieve their KPIs. Then another example of that is when next door first started to leverage our 70 solution and for you know advertisers that really care for more the less click or more the MMP uh driven measurements that is essentially a way to leverage the algorithm in order for the algorithm to focus on users that are more likely to converge on the basis of a seven-day click not excluding the view but

focusing more on the on the last click. And then you can also see how they were able to achieve you know lower CPIs as well as higher rows within their [clears throat] BAE. And finally when it comes to the um product adoption side of the house when it comes to the performance part we also launched value optimization. I know that VO value or the likes of Tivro was have been in the market for quite some time when it comes to our competitors. But value optimization really also brought uh a level of additional um testing opportunities for advertisers to be able to perhaps build a cohort that is a little bit more qualified, go after your AOS, go after users that really can bring uh the LTV towards the the green zone within the the app. And that has also been one of the livers uh to drive growth for the gaming advertisers. But if I talk about a lot about all the products that we launch without having a

reliable measurement ecosystem in place, that won't translate well because it might mean that we're optimizing towards the right user, but we might not be showing up well on your source of truth. So what we've done, we've really understood how we're partner with with our gaming advertisers today and what really the trends in the industry are and what they're uh facing in terms of challenges, but how we can progress and move forward to really equip them for you know a challenging year of 2026 that at least they will be able to take decisions based on the most transpar transparent way possible of uh understanding what trends they're looking like from both a cohorted way but also from a more granular way such as you know all the way down to log level user reporting and whatnot and that's when you know a year and a half down the line we partner with all our MMPs starting from apps all the way towards uh singular branch adjust and

all of them to really launch what is best-in-class called today an advanc SRN partnership which means that we are leveraging additional signals. We're building more robust and resilient uh ecosystem when it comes to a privacentric uh space and really building for better optimization as well as better reporting on the MMP side. So today, not only you were able to um have granular report all the way to the ad level via the dual opt-in, you also were able to even from kind of like both a click and a viewbased when it comes to apps if you based on an apps MMP for example, you're able to really have that granular reporting or leverage um you know solutions that are able to give you the indication that even down to the ad level you're able to make decisions really understanding the users within

the iOS ecosystem um and make make those decisions more um fair and uh informed. And on top of that, as we have the advanced SERN U connection, we now also enhance what we call our advanced conversions ecosystem, which is essentially plugging in all the signals resilience that we have from the partnership into our own algorithm and the way that we operate and approach things from an optimization standpoint. And then when we speak about having resilient signals and then have a product that is really targeting for the right user at the right time, we then have to start caring about clients KPIs and the true challenges at core and I'm really really excited for our road map this year and we started to already push some things live and some things are in alphabet and some things are even g for you to experience with them today But

this it goes into a trail of things that we're building to better suit our advertisers and having their true challenges and KPIs of focus and building for them to for them to be able to leverage as Snapchat. So first obviously if we're talking about uh about a probabilistic environment you still might want to have scan reporting right. So the first thing that we've done where if you're optimizing towards advanced conversions, you're still able to have scan reporting so you can do the cross channel measurement in the most informative way. Second, we launched a um metric uh within our first party uh that's not only reporting is also actually optimization that's called app acquisition conversion metrics. What does that mean in a simplistic way is a paired conversion. So actually matching the way that the MMPs report the conversion and install to the way that

we report the conversion and the install and optimize towards those uh those essentially no activation requires are something that we already launched within our ads manager itself and then you're able to uh check the reports obviously the discrepancy now goes as low as 5 to 10% if you're leveraging those particular solutions and we're also optimizing towards them meaning that your ads stack just eventually as Snapchat became a lot more efficient. But we build those things obviously as you already can have a taster on what's to come but eventually this is the product that is our northstar and what we're being towards working towards what we're building here uh and I must say uh we don't have something similar to that in in the competition or the players in the social space and ecosystem today. So if you are already a gaming advertisers, you're advertising as NAP, I would say please reach out to your uh point of contact as Snapchat, if you would like

to get into the alpha or beta stages depending on which MMP you leverage today. [snorts] But this particular solution is quite exciting because it truly optimizes for uh what you as you know a gaming advertiser cares about. What we done here we actually you uh you you guys understand how the ecosystem from a measurement standpoint um works. So every time that we receive secondary pings from the from the MMP we can read them we can leverage them and we can optimize them. So essentially what we done, we built a proxy that's able to not only optimize. So when a user see or clicks an ad on Snapchat, but truly when that particular user is going to see the ad or click on the ad is going that install is going to be attributed to Snap and the conversion is essentially attributed also to Snap. meaning that we're no longer wasting no budgets, but we're really actually, you know, leveraging the budget in the most

efficient way they can possibly be because we're leveraging a solution in an ecosystem that's truly catered for your source of truth. So if they is you know leveraging the MMP with an additional of uh a BI on top and the way that you um use your reporting or in the way that you combine both uh MMP reporting plus the scan. We're taking all of that into account and building for better um and more specific signal. So we're able to see the results and trust that the platform is really optimizing towards your best interest and your best KPIs. I'm not going to spoil in terms of case studies because the results are really promising. So if you guys want to learn more about us, this is in our beta stage. Please come to our booth. We are more than happy to showcase what uh gaming advertisers have been seen with this particular solution today. And finally, we also build for the gaming ecosystem in itself when it comes

to formats. But I must say obviously we our best-selling product as NAP or the reason why users keep returning 40 times a day is obviously our chat feed and we open the chat feed for advertising as well and then only um drove incremental value for us because there's a lot of uh impressions in there but also impressions that are uh converting so we can see at 18% growth in in the number of unique Snapchatters. who installed and purchased within the app ecosystem. Then we also have app and cards. All of that to continue to power for automation and the way that you can really leverage creatives in the way that it can have conversions at the end of the day. So end cards essentially they build from the end cards within the app ad store itself. So it grabs reviews from the users, it grabs the selling point of the apps and it just transforms them into an

ad doubling down the automation piece. Especially when you know leveraging creative and creative fatigue is so at core. This particular solutions they do help when driving additional clicks and additional conversions. But then finally, one solution that we haven't really put into the market while a lot of our competitors have done is playables. And maybe playables might seem something from the past, but not for Snapchat because the synergy that we have with the gaming audience is so high and the way that you know the game the users interacting such a playful way. Um, we have been seeing really, really strong results when it comes to this particular new ad format just because users are more likely to actually play a playable within Snapchat. They are used to, you know, the AR connection that they already open to the camera and are playing with the features. Now, they're actually just more engaged with having that playable feature enabled on

Snapchat. And what we have been seeing quite impressive results, I must say. So nearly 400 predicted rowers increase uh if compared to this particular gaming client's BAU if you care about midphone on driving volume and new installers 37% dropping CPIs while sustaining a 19% higher row um that power pack there's a [clears throat] lot of features out there um and I'm pretty sure one of them is probably going to be suitable for your gaming and for your 2026 strategy for growth. move. So, please come back to to the booth and speak to one of us. We're more than happy to continue a chat to have a chat. I'm not sure if I even used the 25 minutes or if I have time for questions.
Uh, you've used the 25 minutes.
25 minutes. I needed the extra five. So, that was good.
Thank you very much. [clears throat]
Thank you so much. If there's questions, I'm more than happy to chat outside. [applause]