Gen-X Opps: Snap taps new president, quadruples FY 2022 TV spend (Score 45)

Sales Lead: Snapchat parent company Snap just snapped up its first-ever Americas president, Rob Wilk, effective April 2023.

• Wilk joined from Microsoft, where he worked for eight years and was most recently the corporate advertising VP and global head.
• He will now lead Snap's ad partners based in regions including the US.
• Snap's leadership is currently focused on building a large and expanding advertising business.
• Wilk's hire is the latest in various regional hires in the monetization and advertising space.
• The company will likely:
  • Shift strategy
  • Ramp up digital spend
  • Continue increasing TV spend
  • Seek new agency partners
• Target demographic: 
  • ​​​​​​​Gen-X
    • ​​​​​​​Snap is pretty well-established among Gen-Z and millennials, so the company seems to be bolstering national TV spend in order to reach Gen-X.

Additional recent leadership shifts:

• Snap also hired marketing science VP in September 2022.
  • He was most recently the data commercialization VP at ServiceChannel.

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: So far this year, Snap has allocated roughly $18.5m toward digital ads, already more than 4x the roughly $3.8m allocated in all of 2022.
  • Last year: The company allocated around $3.8m toward this channel in 2022, a huge increase from when it allocated around $66.4k in 2021.
  • 2023 ad programming: Snap's 2023 commercials have targeted the male-skewed audience of shows such as NFL Football, The Oscars, NBA Basketball, College Basketball, and True Blood.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: YTD, the company has allocated roughly $451.9k toward digital ads, less than half of the roughly $1.1m allocated by this point last year.
  • YTD data: Since the beginning of 2023, Snap has earned about 64.7m digital impressions via desktop display (36%), Instagram (21%), Facebook (16%), YouTube (16%), and mobile display (11%) ads.
    • The company has placed this year's desktop display ads site direct onto dexerto.com.
  • Last year: Snap's estimated full-year 2022 spend, $6.9m, reached 21% less than that of $8.7m in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The company utilizes OOH, local broadcast, digital, print, YouTube, and Twitter ads.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: The new DM's advertising focus means his hire could lead to agency reviews, so contact soon to be top-of-mind.
  • ​​​​​​​We have not yet heard of any roster shifts following Snap's recent appointment of organic growth and marketing VP Ty Ahmad-Taylor.
• Current agency roster:
  • In-House: Media
  • ​​​​​​​In-House: Creative
  • OMD: Media AOR
  • Giant Spoon: Social AOR
  • 1000heads: Social agency partner

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser; DRTV insights by Media Analytics.