What Snapchat’s New Pharma Ad Format Means for Healthcare Marketers

by Shaun Campos, Senior Group Director, Social

Healthcare marketers have long faced the challenge of balancing social platform innovation with compliance requirements.

Snapchat’s recent pharma advertising update, which allows advertisers to include up to three disclaimer call-to-action attachments with multiple links to safety and prescribing information, is the latest example of a platform evolving to better support regulated industries. While our teams at Real Chemistry have successfully executed branded ads on Snapchat before, the update removes a compliance hurdle that has contributed to branded advertising limitations on the platform. This brings Snapchat closer to functionality already common on several other social platforms and makes it easier for healthcare marketers to evaluate the channel alongside other options.

But that’s the less interesting part of the story. The bigger question is whether marketers are paying enough attention to the ongoing shift from public posting to private sharing that’s happening across nearly every social platform. Spend five minutes observing device habits at a concert or sporting event and you’ll quickly realize Snapchat is alive and well.

You don’t always see it in the same way you see Instagram or TikTok being used because much of the Snapchat activity happens between friends rather than in public feeds. Take notes on how younger consumers use their phones. They’re sharing quick photos, messaging, checking location maps and communicating in real time. Snapchat remains one of the few platforms purpose-built around that behavior.

With Snapchat remaining a Gen Z staple, the app represents an opportunity to reach younger health consumers. For conditions and categories that skew younger, and for caregiver or adherence messaging aimed at a Gen Z audience, Snapchat offers test-and-learn potential. For campaigns with experiential tie-ins, Snapchat’s AR Lenses and Filters and Snap Map’s Promoted Places map can serve as extensions to activation ideas with a physical or interactive component—think screening events, patient community moments, retail pharmacy and clinic footprints, or awareness-day programming.

But remember, effective channel planning isn’t about chasing the newest feature or update and overhauling your channel strategy. It requires evaluating a range of considerations, including where audiences spend time, how platforms support brand safety requirements, alignment with business objectives, targeting capabilities, creative opportunities, optimization features and measurement approaches.

As always, it’s important to continually evaluate how emerging capabilities align with your audience behavior, business goals and the evolving ways people seek, share and discuss health information online.

In the meantime, we’ll be furiously checking our iPhone camera rolls to see if our old Snapchat memories still exist, all while thinking of new ways to reach and engage people using social to help manage their health.