That screenshot above is for a geofilter application in Salt Lake City, Utah. We wanted to sponsor the Silicon Slopes Summit conference with a filter at the convention center in the city. After we made our filter, we went to draw the fence around the convention center and saw that the price was $20,000. We were disappointed, but figured that the high cost was due to the fact that the convention center location was a popular venue, and perhaps Snapchat has tagged all similar venues around the country. That would make sense. So we decided to just sponsor the block next to the center – still $20k. We kept going farther and farther away, but it was always $20,000, even for just a one hour sponsorship. Then we remember, it’s the Sundance Film Festival. Snapchat must have tagged the entire downtown with this fee, regardless of area or duration. We confirmed this in other cities with events as well.

As new ad units from Snapchat become more rampant and available to all, we expect this to happen less. Nobody had any custom Snapchat filters downtown today, obviously due to the massive fee for such a small audience.

All this being said, a targeted Snapchat geofilter campaign still provides fantastic CPMs, as long as you carry out the campaign correctly.