Back in April, Snapchat announced that it had seen an 85% uptick in SMB advertisers in the app, which has also driven a big increase in comparative ad revenue in the first half of the year.

So how did it do it?

Today, Snap has shared an overview of its evolving ad tools, which have helped to provide more capacity for Snap advertisers to reach more users, create better ads, and boost performance.

And as Snap continues to drive better results, they could also get you more interested in Snap’s emerging and improving ad options.

First off, Snap has outlined recent improvements to its Lead Gen Ads, including enhanced lead optimization, and an integration with Zapier to automate leads reporting into your CRM.

Snap says that these updates have led to a 69% reduction in cost-per-lead, and a 62% increase in Lead form submission rate.

Led gen ads can be a great way to measure interest, while also building a direct outreach pipeline with your campaigns. Snap’s enhanced offerings provide more options on this front.

Snap’s also improved its app ads, with new bidding capabilities and improved optimization to support app installs, app purchase, and “app re-engage purchase” capabilities.

Snap’s also seen good response with initial tests of its “Value Optimization” option for app advertisers, which enables marketers to bid on the basket value of purchases driven.

As per Snap:

“Early test results are encouraging, and indicate that mobile gaming and eCommerce advertisers in particular will benefit from the new optimization. For example, Lancôme, a beauty brand from L'Oréal, leveraged Value Optimization to drive a 38% increase in average purchase cart size and a 4.4x increase in ROAS.”

Snap’s reach to younger audiences could be particularly valuable for app marketers, and these new updates will definitely appeal to app marketers.

Snap’s also driving better performance with its more advanced AR ad offerings, including “First Lens Unlimited” which ensures that a promoted Lens gets the first slot in the Lens Carousel.

Snap says that First Lens Unlimited has helped drive a 25% to 45% increase in incremental impressions for advertising partners, and it’s now making the option available to all ad partners globally.

Snap’s also launching a new “State Targeted First Story” offering, which will enable U.S. advertisers (initially) to target their “First Story” takeover campaigns to individual states, while it also recently launched AR Extensions for businesses which enable brands to utilize AR promotions in other areas of the app.

And AR is driving results:

“Overall, we’ve found that when marketers pair AR ads with video ads on Snapchat, their campaigns see 1.6x higher Ad Awareness Lift on average compared to video ads alone. And research from our partners at OMD and Amplified Intelligence found that Snapchat campaigns that include AR in their mix drive 5x more active attention compared to industry peers.”

Snap says that AR Extensions is now in beta and will be rolling out globally in September.

Finally, Snap’s also working on generative AI enabled ad tools, including AI Lenses, like its ML Scribble World Lens, which was viewed over 1 billion times in Q2.

Snap is now developing new options to make it easier for ad partners to create AI-powered Lenses, which could further democratize AR creation.

Finally, Snap’s also integrating generative AI into its ad copy and creative process.

“Marketers can now use our new GenAI Copy Generator to create headlines with AI, which is particularly helpful for brands looking to localize ad copy in non-English speaking markets.”

Meta, TikTok and others are also building in generative AI elements for ad creation, which, at the least, will provide more prompts to consider for your ad copy.

It’s interesting to consider Snap’s various ad updates, and the focus elements of its new ads push. Snap’s revised its approach to focus on ad development in its key markets, which could see more opportunity coming your way, while it’s also building its revenue capacity in developing regions.

Which, in the end, could see Snap develop a much more robust ad network. These updates are all steps in the right direction, which will provide more options for your campaigns.