Today, Snapchat is releasing a new report that examines the difference in effectiveness between branding and direct response efforts, and which really contributes to more direct sales activity in the app.

The report builds on insights by TransUnion and Dentsu and looks at how differences in campaign goals make a difference in results based on more than three years of data from 36 advertisers in a range of verticals.

Which ends up with?

While the share of spend between brand and DR differed by category, we found that across the board, there is no tradeoff, and both campaign strategies were efficient in driving sales. Both the brand and DR campaigns contribute disproportionately more sales relative to the share of budget each campaign type receives.
Thus, what the comparative performance of Snap campaigns in the regions of brand and direct response affirms is that sales performance is driven by spending.

Snap declares:

"One important finding from the study is that brands influence sales, particularly on Snapchat.". For example, under the Commerce category, the study showed that the ROAS split out between brand and DR campaigns was when both campaign types drive above-average ROAS; yet, brand spend drove the higher ROAS. Brand spend driving above-average ROAS was not exclusive to the Commerce vertical. This applies across all the other categories in our research. 
In addition, the platform found that running both brand and direct response campaigns even elicits better responses.

"Across all of the verticals, the analysis revealed that running brand and DR campaigns concurrently delivers incremental ROAS compared to running in isolation to one another."
In other words, without going into too much industry ad jargon here, the ultimate bottom line of the study is that advertisers can generate higher campaign effectiveness on Snap by boosting their spend across both brand and direct response approaches, with the combination of the two approaches helping to maximize reach and resonance as well as sales.

Which, given that this is a study published by Snap itself, is no real surprise, but the data backs up the idea that Snap advertisers do see more sales activity when pushing both approaches as opposed to focusing on one or the other.

A bit more food for thought in relation to your Snap ad approach.