Brief:

• Snapchat, the image-messaging application with 173 million users, is moving beyond the testing stage of conversion pixels to help marketers track smartphone users' actions after seeing an ad. The company's Snap Pixel tool is geared toward direct response marketers that track which ad placements help boost website traffic and sales, Adweek reported.
• TechStyle, the parent company of e-commerce brands Fabletics, JustFab and ShoeDazzle, is one of the first advertisers to test Snapchat’s conversion pixel. TechStyle tracked the number of people who bought something within 24 hours of seeing an ad and found that Snap Pixel cut the cost-per-purchase from its ads by 40% to 60%. The company also attributed 28% more conversions from its Snapchat ads in a single day of tracking, Adweek reported.
• Signet Jewelers, which owns Kay Jewelers, Zales and Jared, also plans to use Snap Pixel, while Omnicom’s Resolution Media is testing the tool for several retailers during the holiday season.

Insight:

Snapchat is finally getting on board with an advertising technology that’s been around longer than Google and Facebook, which are now the most important companies in digital advertising. The idea is to package an ad with an almost invisible graphic image file with the dimensions of a single pixel. Even though viewers can’t see the pixel tag, the image is sent from an ad server that logs the activity and identifying information for marketers to use for retargeting and to measure an ad's success.

Snapchat lets advertisers create a pixel in its ad-buying dashboard by picking a website to monitor. Marketers then can track campaigns in real time and analyze data collected within 28 days after someone has viewed or engaged with an ad.

Snap Pixel will make Snapchat’s platform more useful to marketers as the social media company strives to increase ad sales. The pixel tags by the end of the year will include ad targeting that lets brands reach more specific audiences and repeat customers to their websites. Snapchat will let users opt out of retargeting if they aren’t comfortable being tracked online.

Parent company Snap is scheduled to report quarterly earnings next week, and the pressure is on to show improvements in sales and audience growth. Facebook recently said Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status — two app features that mimic Snapchat — have 300 million daily active users, up from 250 million last summer. Snapchat has had an advantage in reaching younger audiences, which may be key to outrunning the Facebook juggernaut.