This article goes through automating ads in Snapchat based on a feed. Campaign automation and ad set automation has their own articles, which follow similar steps.

Alongside with this information, see the basic steps for creating campaigns, and make sure you have set up your automation feeds:

• Create ads in new campaigns and define ad settings
• Edit ads or add new ads in existing campaigns

Step 1: Set up automation

To enable automation for an ad:

1. In the Automation section of the ad settings, enable automation with the toggle.
2. In Data source, select the automation feed that provides the feed data.

The ad is now a 'template' that automation uses to create ads when you publish. Check the bottom of the Automation section: it shows how many ads automation will create for you.

Step 2: Limit how automation uses items from feed

You may want to control what feed data the automation uses so that you get the exact ads you want. By default, each row in the feed leads to its own ad. You can filter the list down and group rows to produce fewer ads.

Use the additional automation settings in the Automation section for this:

1. In Filters, define a filter to limit which feed items are included in automation.
   • To add a condition:
     
     1. Click Add new condition.
     2. Select the feed field that the condition checks.
     3. Select the operation used to check the data.
     4. Enter the condition's value that is checked against the feed's value.
   • You can also group conditions. To add a group, click Add new group.
   • If you use multiple conditions or groups, define how the conditions are checked:
     • All: All the conditions must match.
     • Any: It's enough if one of the conditions matches.
2. In Group by feed field, group feed items to limit how automation uses items to create ads. Select the feed fields that you want to group together.
3. In Limit, limit how many ads are created based on the feed. For example, if you set the limit to 5, ads are created for the first five matching rows from the feed, and the rest of the rows are discarded.
4. In Sort, sort feed items for automation based a specific feed field: select a feed field and the sorting direction.

From the bottom of the panel, you can open the feed preview. It helps you inspect what kind of data is in your feed and view the results of your filters on the data.

In this example, you're using a filter to only include feed items where the price is higher than 10 and the category of the product is "Decoration". You're also sorting the feed items based on the ID field in the feed. 

Targeting ads to ad sets

With automated ad sets and ads, by default, every ad will be placed within every ad set. This is often something that you don't want. For example if you set up ad sets to target postal codes, and set up local ads targeting those zip codes, then you only want to creates ads in the ad sets that is targeting the postal code. Assuming that you use same feed for ad set and ad, and each row has the postal code information, you'd want to first group ad sets by postal code and set ads to target the correct ad set. You can do it by manually adding a filter which checks that the postal code from both the ad set feed and the ad feed matches. On ad level, add a filter and set a filter similar to "PostalCode is {{adSet.feed.postalCode}}. Your actual column name might be named something other than PostalCode, and it would have to be updated. this ensures that ad sets are created into the correct campaigns.

If you also have automated campaigns, then it is good practice to add a filter for campaign level as well, as a secondary check that the ad is only reaching the right audience.

Step 3: Use feed data in input fields

Use data from the feed to automate the individual field inputs in the ad settings, including the ad name. You can also combine static text with data you have gotten from the feed.

In general, in text inputs, you refer to a feed field using the double curly braces notation: {{feed.fieldname}}. For example, {{feed.id}} pulls the field ID from the feed.

To refer to a feed field in an ad setting:

1. Click next to the field to enable using feed data.
2. Either click and select a feed field, or enter the reference to the feed field manually. Include the prefix feed and a full stop before the feed field's name.

In this example, the ad media is an image found at the URL that is defined in the feed, and the ad copy uses a headline and brand name from the feed.

Naming macros

On top of the feed values, you can also use naming macros with curly braces. Naming macros means taking a value from one field and putting it into another field, like for example adding the campaign name or objective into the ad set name. 

On ad level, you can use macros from the campaign, ad set and level. Here are the macros that you can use on ad level:

{{campaign.name}}
{{campaign.objective}}
{{adSet.name}}
{{adSet.optimizationGoal}}
{{ad.callToAction}}
{{ad.creativeName}}
{{ad.mediaName}}
{{ad.name}}

Step 4: Review the automation output and publish

When you're ready with the ad settings, use the review phase to check that your automation setup will produce the ads you wanted. See details on how to review and publish Snapchat campaigns.

In the Ads section in the review dialog, you see the actual ads that will be created. For each ad, the From feed item field shows the ID of the feed item that was used for the ad. The icon next to a field indicates that automation was used in that field.

Do you want to check what feed data is being used for an automated field? Hover over the icon to see the value you defined in the ad settings: the feed fields and any static content you used.

After reviewing, you can go ahead and publish the ads to Snapchat.