Most ad formats interrupt what someone is watching. Sponsored Snaps sit somewhere more personal: the Chat inbox, among messages from friends. Snap launched them in October 2024. For brands with a big Snapchat audience, which in Saudi Arabia covers a lot of brands, they are worth understanding properly.
The details below come from Snap's business site, newsroom and investor letters, checked in September 2026. Snap's main help article on the format would not load during research, so a few details are taken from Snap's own search summaries and marked as such.
What the viewer sees
A Sponsored Snap arrives in the Chat inbox as a full-screen vertical Snap from the brand. Snap describes it as visually distinct from other Snaps, marked with an Ad badge, and says it is not delivered with a push notification, so it never buzzes someone's phone like a message from a friend. If it is left unopened, it is removed. People can clear it or report it.
When someone opens it, they see the ad full screen, and they can reply. Replying opens a one to one chat with the brand, which is where the format becomes different from anything else Snap sells. Only one Sponsored Snap is shown to a person at a time.
The conversation that follows
The brand can set up what happens in the chat. According to Snap's help summaries and ad partners' documentation, that includes a branded chat background, a chat message of up to 500 characters, and an automatic reply of up to 500 characters or a video of under 3 minutes.
- Write the chat message as a continuation of the ad, not a repeat of it: the offer, the next step, and what the brand can help with.
- Make the automatic reply genuinely useful, since it is the first answer the person gets.
- Decide who reads and answers the replies, and how fast. A chat that nobody answers does more harm than no chat at all.
Who can run them
The ad account must have a linked public profile, and Snap's summaries add that the profile needs a profile photo. Some categories are excluded: ads for health, employment and credit, ads that carry offer or discount details, and ads for competing platforms. Single image or video, Story and static collection ads can be delivered in the Chat inbox.
Snap's pages list awareness and engagement, sales, app promotion and traffic among the objectives, with the Chat feed paired with Stories placements for the sales, app and traffic objectives. The sources do not agree perfectly on this list, so check the options in Ads Manager when you set up the campaign.
Where they run
Snap said in December 2025 that Sponsored Snaps had rolled out globally. The European Union and Norway came later: the launch there was announced on 2 June 2026, with auction buying following in July. For Gulf campaigns the format is available, and in Saudi Arabia in particular it reaches an audience that lives in the app.
What Snap says about results
Snap's investor letter for the first quarter of 2026 reported gains for the format of 226 percent in click-through rate and 59 percent in seven-day conversions, and that nearly 75 percent of its daily Chat users in the United States saw ads in Chat. In April 2026, announcing AI Sponsored Snaps, which put a brand's own AI agent in Chat and are in alpha with Experian as the first partner, Snap said Sponsored Snaps deliver 22 percent more conversions at nearly 20 percent lower cost per action. These are Snap's own results about its own product, so treat them as reasons to test, not forecasts.
Reporting
An impression is counted when the ad is at least half on screen for at least a second, or when it is tapped. Snap's summaries say that feed opens combine opens from the Chat inbox with opens from Discover, without a separate breakdown for the Chat feed, so the report will not isolate chat performance neatly. Plan the measurement around what happens after the open: replies, clicks and conversions.
Snap's creative advice
- A headline of about 24 to 28 characters, which fits the space without being cut.
- Video in the style of a Snap from a person, under 10 seconds.
- Snap's own interface elements, such as the text bar, so the ad feels at home in the app.
- A reason to reply, since the conversation is the point of the format.
When to use them
Sponsored Snaps suit offers that benefit from a conversation: bookings, consultations, product questions and launches where people will want to ask something. They suit less well a brand that has nobody to answer the chat. For Saudi clients in particular, they are worth testing alongside Snap Ads, with the replies routed to whoever handles the brand's customer messages.
The ad mockup generator on this site draws a Snap Ad full screen with the brand, headline and button in Snap's own style, which is also a quick way to check the creative that will open from the inbox.
