Snapchat Wrote a Case Study About Our Work. Here's the Full Story.

Last November, we did something most DTC agencies are still reluctant to recommend: we went all-in on Snapchat during BFCM, the most competitive, highest-stakes advertising window of the year, for Quay Sunglasses.

The bet paid off. Snapchat published a case study about it. And we want to explain not just what happened, but why it happened, and what it means for every DTC brand still treating Snap as an afterthought.

What Snapchat Published

Comparing Dynamic Catalog Ad campaigns against non-dynamic campaigns, November 1 through December 8, 2025:

• +40% higher ROAS vs. non-dynamic campaigns
• 2.86x higher click-through rate at 67% lower cost per click
• 131% lower cost per purchase

These numbers came out of one of the noisiest retail seasons on record, every brand with a media budget competing for the same eyeballs. The performance lift wasn't marginal. It was definitive.

The Strategy Behind It

The approach wasn't complicated, but it required conviction before the data existed to support it.

We brought Snapchat into Quay's media mix with a specific thesis: Gen Z and millennial fashion consumers are underpriced on Snap, and Dynamic Product Ads would let us serve hyper-relevant creative at scale without the constant manual burden of creative versioning that kills most brands' Snap programs before they get traction.

Dynamic Catalog Ads pull directly from a live product feed. Snapchat's algorithm handles creative personalization, matching the right frames to each shopper based on their browsing behavior and purchase intent signals. The result is relevance at scale. Every impression is personalized. No guesswork, no endless creative variations.

We also started the ramp early, pre-BFCM, so the algorithm arrived at peak season with context. Brands that try to fire up new channels cold in November consistently underperform. The algorithm needs time to learn. We gave it that time.

What This Pattern Looks Like Across Our Portfolio

The Quay result didn't surprise us. It confirmed a pattern we've been building across our Snapchat client base.

Across the 4 brands we currently manage on Snapchat, we've generated over 4M in Snap-attributed revenue on approximately 503K in total ad spend, a blended 8.7x ROAS across the portfolio. Individual account performance ranges from 3.6x to 12.8x depending on vertical, creative approach, and warm-up strategy. Every account we've run properly-structured Dynamic Catalog Ads on has exceeded its pre-Snap ROAS expectations.

The consistent finding: brands in fashion, accessories, beauty, and lifestyle that run Dynamic Catalog Ads with a proper warm-up strategy and native creative consistently outperform their own benchmarks on Snap. It's not the platform that's failing most brands. It's the approach.

Most brands run Snap like a smaller Meta, same creative assets, same bidding logic, same structure. That almost never works. Snap's audience is different. The content norms are different. The algorithm rewards native, product-forward content, not repurposed Meta ads.

Why the Window Is Still Open

Here's the honest version of the channel timing argument:

Snapchat CPMs for fashion and lifestyle audiences are still meaningfully lower than Meta and Google. The Gen Z and younger millennial cohort that lives on Snap is less saturated with brand advertising than on other platforms. And Snap's Dynamic Product Ads technology is mature enough that it actually works, this isn't a channel you're fighting the algorithm on anymore.

That combination, real audience, working product, affordable CPMs, has a shelf life. Once enough brands figure out the playbook, CPMs normalize and the edge closes. We're building the playbook now, for our clients, before that happens.

Quay's decision to make Dynamic Catalog Ads a permanent part of their evergreen strategy, not just a Q4 tactic, is the signal that matters. When a brand adds a channel and never looks back, you know it's working for the business, not just the BFCM scorecard.

Read the source: Snapchat's full Quay case study is published at forbusiness.snapchat.com. All headline stats sourced from Snap Ads Manager, Nov 1 through Dec 8, 2025.

FAQ

Is Snapchat in Your Media Mix?

If you're a DTC brand in fashion, beauty, or lifestyle and Snap isn't part of your channel strategy, we'd like to show you what it looks like when it's built right.

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