Choose a Snapchat campaign objective: Awareness, Traffic, Leads or Sales

What each objective is for

Snapchat's current objective types in the Marketing API are Awareness & Engagement, Traffic, Leads, Sales and App Promotion. Older objectives such as brand awareness, video views, web conversion or lead generation still exist in the legacy field, which is why you may see both vocabularies in documentation and in older campaigns.

Awareness & Engagement fits when you need people to see and remember a brand, a new location or an event, and you accept that results are measured in reach, video views or story opens rather than actions on your site. Traffic fits when a visit to a page is the goal; the ad squad can optimize for swipes or landing page views. Use it when you do not yet have conversion tracking you trust.

Leads fits when the outcome is a contact: a lead form submission inside Snapchat, or a website sign-up tracked by the pixel. Sales fits when the outcome is a purchase and the Snap Pixel or Conversions API reports it with a value. These objectives are only as good as the events behind them; with no events, the system has nothing to learn from.

A simple rule for a small advertiser: pick the deepest objective you can measure honestly. If you can reliably record a form submission, use Leads. If only page visits are measurable, start with Traffic and add events before you change the objective. Switching objective later means a new campaign, so decide before you build.

Why the objective decides the rest

The objective, the optimization goal and the report all talk about the same outcome.
You avoid paying for traffic when you wanted leads, or the reverse.
Missing tracking shows up as a decision before launch, not as a puzzle after a week of spend.

Pick the objective in five checks

State the outcome in one sentence and a number you can count (for example: a completed driver application).
Check whether that outcome is already recorded by the Snap Pixel, the Conversions API or a lead form. If not, plan that first.
Pick the objective for the deepest outcome you can measure, then check which optimization goals the ad squad offers for it.
For jobs, housing or credit ads, declare the regulated category on the campaign before you create anything else.
Write the objective and its success metric in the campaign name or notes, so the next person reads results against the right goal.

Good to know

Do not compare cost per result between campaigns with different objectives; a swipe and a purchase are not the same result.
When AdAce Ads creates a Snapchat campaign (paused), it accepts Traffic, Leads, Sales or Awareness & Engagement and requires you to state explicitly whether restricted delivery signals apply. Early access; no live account has been connected yet.

Sources and further reading

Try it on your own accounts

Create a workspace, connect Google or Meta in a couple of clicks and see your accounts clearly. Changes follow your approvals or the policy you configure.

Create your workspace