• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 4, 2017

Responding to calls for better ad tracking and measurement tools, Snap is now offering marketers some “advanced” campaign management options.

Tailored for Snap’s largest and most sophisticated business partners, the “advanced mode” is designed to help them quickly build, manage and scale their respective campaigns.

The effort includes permutation builders with which brands can create and launch hundreds of targeting and creative variations with a few clicks.

In addition, advanced users now have access to Snap-created spreadsheets, which they can use to create and edit campaigns in bulk. Brands can also save their audiences to a “targeting library” to more easily find and apply audiences to existing ad sets.

The options are similar to those already available to brands using Facebook’s Power Editor. The bigger picture is that Snap is clearly on a mission to measure up to Facebook’s ad management infrastructure.

Without mentioning Facebook, a Snap spokesperson said on Friday the company has been focused on improving measurement, targeting and optimization over the past year. 

Earlier this week, Snap also began 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 an 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 an ROAS of $4.76, which is more than five times the category average, according to the real-time information provider.

In restaurants, Snapchat drove an 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.