• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 1, 2017

Among marketers, Snap is widely believed to suffer from a lack of ad tracking and measure tools.

Challenging this stigma, the social giant is rolling out a new measurement program that addresses marketing mix modeling (MMM).

With the help of Neustar Marketshare, Nielsen, Analytic Partners and Marketing Management Analytics, the initiative specifically measures return on ad spend (ROAS) and sales lift.

Since its IPO, Snap’s measurement shortcomings have been scrutinized by analysts.  

“Most social marketers already complain about Snapchat’s lack of user data and proper social measurement,” Forrester analyst Jessica Liu said recently.

In tests, the focus on MMM -- which helps brands isolate, measure and forecast the impact of specific marketing tactics -- has shown promise. For example, in movie theatrical release campaigns, Snapchat drove a ROAS of $14.33, which is more than five times the category average, as measured by Neustar.

In the carbonated soft-drinks campaigns, Snapchat drove a ROAS of $4.76, which is more than five times the category average, according to the real-time information provider.

In restaurants, Snapchat drove average ROAS of $10.76, which is nearly three times the category median, as measured across nine restaurant campaigns by Placed.

Additionally, of the 59 offline sales studies conducted by Oracle Data Cloud and Nielsen Catalina Services, 83% had positive sales lift.

Based on seven retail campaigns measured by Nielsen Buyer Insights, Snapchat drove an average sales lift in total spend per household of more than 7%.

Based on 20 campaigns measured by Placed, Snapchat drove a median visitation lift of 9.5%, which bested the Placed median of 7.4%. 

As part of a broader ad push, Snap recently unveiled a Certified Partners program -- offering advertisers help in planning, executing and improving their Snapchat ad buys. With Certified Partners, the idea is to encourage brands to create more video ads, which have historically been harder to create than banner and text ads.

To participate in Snap’s Certified Partners program, the social giant is requiring “partners” to participate in training, which encompass best practices and execution strategies.

Snap also began rolling out Snap Publisher -- a tool for brands to create ads in less than two minutes.

Among other features, the browser-based tool lets brands trim horizontal videos into vertical mobile videos, access an existing library of ad templates, and add motion to still photos and images.