How Much Do Snapchat Ads Cost in 2025?

Snapchat doesn’t charge set prices to share ads on the platform. Instead, it operates on a goal-based bidding model. Essentially, you choose the action you’d like users to take on your ad, such as clicks, shares, or Story opens, then enter a bid of how much you’re willing to pay for every time that action is completed.

When your campaign is live, your ads will be shown to the people who are most likely to carry out that action, with hopes to achieve your goal for the lowest possible cost.

Snapchat ultimately bills all advertisers per one thousand impressions (CPM) that the ad receives.

How Much To Spend On Snapchat Ads

You’ll need to spend at least $5 per day on Snapchat to hit the minimum spend requirement. That said, Snapchat recommends spending somewhere between $20 and $50 to see desirable results.

The start of any new campaign will enter a “Learning phase”, during which time Snapchat’s system will analyze your campaign’s goal, settings, and ads to determine which users to show them to. While it acclimatizes, which typically takes between one and seven days, you can expect your CPA to be at its highest.

With multiple advertisers competing for ad visibility, Snapchat uses a few factors to pick which ads to show:

1. Your bid: The more you pay, the more likely it is that Snapchat will show your ad more often
2. How likely users are to take the desired action
3. The quality and relevance of your ad: If it has been flagged by users previously, this will lower its value

This means that a high-quality, accurate ad may be chosen over an inaccurate or inappropriate ad, even if the latter offers a larger bid.

What Kind of Ads Can I Buy?

There are six ad formats on Snapchat’s self-serve advertising platform, each with unique characteristics designed to help you to achieve your goals.

1. Single image or video ads
2. Story ads
3. Product catalog ads
4. Collection ads
5. Dynamic ads
6. AR filters and lenses

Each ad type has its own specialty, so it’s important to choose based on your objectives. To help with this, Snapchat has six business objectives to choose from, which will determine the type of ad you use.

Snapchat’s ad costs fluctuate depending on many factors. Understanding these will help you to optimize your campaign for the best possible result. The most pertinent factor is your bidding strategy.

Snapchat’s auction-based advertising model means that you’ll be bidding against other advertisers to compete for the placement. You’ll set an overall budget per day or for the campaign’s duration, then choose a bidding strategy, by which your bids will be automatically made. There are three ways to bid on Snapchat:

• Auto-bid: Snapchat’s algorithm will automatically adjust your bid during times of high and low potential to spend your budget in the most efficient way possible
• Max bid: You set a maximum bid per action, and Snapchat will either bid in line with or below this number
• Target cost: Rather than setting a maximum CPA (cost per action), you set a target CPA, which Snapchat will aim to achieve overall by dynamically adjusting your bid around this target

Your bidding type will depend on the outcome you want to achieve. For instance, auto-bid would be suitable for you if you’re trying to improve your reach within your set budget, whereas for a performance-based goal that requires higher control over CPA, such as increasing sales, the target cost strategy would work better.

Other factors that will affect your advertising costs are:

• Level of Competition: Users are more likely to spend money during peak ecommerce seasons, which leads to heightened competition for ad space during these periods. Depending on your budget, you can simply increase your bids to keep up with demand, or adjust your schedule to focus on the lower competition periods surrounding the high demand
• Targeting Settings: The more precisely you target your audience, the higher your advertising costs will be. Of course, this also gives you a higher chance of users completing your desired action, so it’s important to experiment for the best return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Ad format: More immersive ad formats, such as AR Lenses, tend to be more expensive than single image or video ads

The short answer: yes, if your target audience aligns with Snapchat’s user demographics, you have the potential for impressive results.

Snapchat ads offer something unique: immersivity. AR filters and lenses mean that ads are experienced rather than skipped through, which goes a long way for brands looking to create an impact. And even for lower budget options, such as single image or video ads, users will always have a full-screen viewing experience – hence why 55% of Gen Z can recall Snapchat ads after watching between just zero and two seconds.

Snapchat’s Ad Costs vs Other Social Media Ad Platforms

In the past, Snapchat has always been a cost-effective advertising option. However, its sharp increase in popularity over the past few years has meant that it’s rapidly becoming pricier. In fact, research by Gupta Media shows that, in 2024, Snapchat had the fastest growing ad rates of all tracked social media platforms, including X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

There are ways you can optimize your Snapchat ad spend while still achieving impressive results. Here are my top tips:

• Install Snap Pixel: This is a piece of code that measures the success of your ad campaigns by tracking user behaviour after they click on your ad. It can reveal important context to help you identify problems and improve your campaigns. You can enable this in the “Tracking” section of your Ad Set settings
• Use A/B testing: Enable “Create Split Test” in your campaign settings to test different campaign variables against each other and find out which strategy gives you the best results
• Analyze and adapt: Use Snapchat’s ad analytics and Snap pixel data to improve your ads continually, and don’t be afraid to make adjustments while the campaign is live
• Gain welcome advertising credits: By signing up to Snapchat Ads with the link in the box below, you’ll be able to reach wider for the same price

Get free credit for Snapchat Ads

Snapchat can help you grow your business and your audience. Discover our limited-time offer: when you spend $350, you get $375 back.

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So, how much do Snapchat ads cost? That number will depend on a number of factors, such as your advertising goal, bid, bid strategy, ad format, and level of competition. Remember that by optimizing your ads for Snapchat’s key auction criteria, you’ll be more likely to achieve results on a lower budget. That means ensuring all your ads use high quality sound, images, videos, and text that accurately reflects the ad content.