This article provides instructions on how you set up a catalog for Snapchat dynamic ads in Smartly. If you have an existing catalog you want to use in Smartly, see how to connect an existing Snapchat catalog.

Note that you can only have one product feed per catalog, but you can have multiple catalogs under an Organization.

Smartly supports Commerce, Hotels and Flights catalogs.

Create a catalog

Check that you have installed the Snapchat pixel and that it's sending the required pixel events.
Check that you have the right catalog permissions: Organization Admin and Catalog Admin.
Set up the Smartly Templates you plan to use for the catalog ads.
In the main navigation, click Catalogs > Snapchat.
Click Create Catalog.
Enter a name for the catalog.
Select a catalog vertical.
Select which pixels and apps you want to use to track the events for this catalog.
It is important to select the correct event sources so that the products and audiences are tracked correctly.
Click Create.

Note When you create a new catalog, your user will be set as the catalog authoriser.

Add a feed to the catalog

After creating a catalog, you're directed to a feed listing view in the newly created catalog. The feed is where the catalog gets the information about your products.

Click Add New Feed.
Enter a name for the feed.
Under Feed updates, select how often the feed updates.
In Data source, enter the URL where the feed file is hosted.
- If the feed is hosted on an SFTP server, add the URL in the following format: sftp://username:password@mydomain.com/path/to/file.csv
  
  Note When added as part of the feed URL, Smartly sometimes can't encode some special characters used in the username and password. If you spot any fetching issues, try using only alphanumeric values for the username and password instead or try to URL encode any non-URL-safe characters in the file path. For example, instead of a space, use '%20'.
To define the advanced settings for the feed, click Advanced settings.
Select the default currency for the catalog.
- The default currency is used to add the required currency information to price fields if the currency is missing from the feed.
After the feed preview loads, map the fields in your data source (Feed fields) into the predefined Catalog fields in the Catalog mapping section.
- If there are any missing or incorrect mappings, see Manual field mapping for more information on how to modify them.
- The catalog fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required. Other fields are optional.
- If your feed already contains additional image fields, Smartly will overwrite them with Image Template URLs. If you want to use the additional images, map image URL fields from your feed to extra fields ("extra_1" - "extra_9") in Smartly, and use the fields in Image Templates.
- If you are using Hotel or Flight vertical catalog and have the "image" field in the JSON format (as it is in the Snapchat feed template), use the following liquid template to take the first image from the list of images:
```
{%- assign images = image | parse_json -%}
{{- images[0].link -}}
```
  The additional fields should be mapped into image templates like highlighted above. See FAQ for further possibilities.
- If you are using templates with the catalog, also map the catalog fields to the template fields.
Once you are happy with the feed settings and field mapping, click Create New Feed.
The feed is now processed according to the schedule defined under Feed updates. When the feed finishes processing, the catalog is ready to use.

Good to know

The Smartly scheduled feed uploads use Snapchat's "replace" logic. This means that products that don't exist in the feed anymore are deleted from the catalog.

Note Updating the automatic feed sync schedule will only take effect after the feed is once more processed according to the previous schedule!

Note: After setting up the catalog, in order to use the Snapchat catalog for campaign creation in Smartly, you'll need to connect it to the Snapchat ad accounts you want to use it on in the ad account settings.

Unfortunately Smartly doesn't yet support product set management for Snapchat catalogs, but as the catalogs are synced with Snapchat, you can define product sets on Snapchat Business Manager and use them in the campaign creation in Smartly.

Manual field mapping

In Catalog mapping, you can fine-tune the feed content by mapping your data source feed fields to the predefined field names used in Snapchat catalogs. If Smartly is not able to automatically map feed fields to catalog product fields, you'll see red warning highlight in the required catalog fields.

Mappings support using dynamic fields, static text, and Liquid templating. To use Liquid templating, select Use Liquid template in the feed field dropdown selector.

As an example of mapping, if your data source contains the product name in the field name, map that to the catalog field title, because that's where Snapchat picks the names of the products.

Preview value shows you a preview of what Snapchat will see as the catalog values. Use the arrows above the column to preview the values for the different products in your feed.

Note It is important to reduce the number of errors at this point. Otherwise there might be unexpected or incorrect behavior while launching campaigns using the catalog.

Example: Connect a Google Sheet as a data source

You need a CSV link to your Google Sheet. See how to use Google Sheet to import a data source.
When you have created the CSV link to your sheet, copy and paste it to the Data source field.
Smartly now fetches a preview (sample) of your data source. The UI shows a notification below the URL field when the feed sample has been successfully fetched.
You can define advanced settings and adjust the catalog mapping, or save the feed configuration.

Tracking parameters

Within the catalog, on the link attribute, you can append URL parameters. This includes click trackers, UTM parameters, or Snapchat URL macros. These parameters should be included on each link prior to connecting the feed. In the Smartly feed configuration, it is also possible to use Liquid markup to construct the tracking parameters on the feed setup.

Snapchat URL macros are also available for tracking parameters. Available macros are:

{{campaign.name}} - send the associated campaign's name in the product link
{{adSet.name}} - send the associated ad set's name in the product link
{{campaign.id}} - send the associated campaign's ID in the product link
{{adSet.id}} - send the associated ad set's ID in the product link
{{ad.id}} - send the associated ad's ID in the product link

URL macros can be added also with Liquid templating, but the Snapchat macro needs to be added inside {% raw %} {% endraw %} tags so that we do not process them before sending to Snapchat.

For example, you can add the campaign ID macro to the end of the link:

{{link}}?utm_campaign={% raw %}{{campaign.id}}{% endraw %}

*Do note that the Snap URL macros can also be directly used in URL Tracking Parameters section during Ad Set-up.

Required fields for App Ads

In order to create ads to promote your mobile app with the catalog, by creating dynamic ads with either App Install or Deep Link attachment, the following fields are required in the feed mapping:

Icon_media_url
Ios_app_nam
Ios_app_store_id
Ios_url
Android_app_name
Android_package
Android_url
Mobile_link

For further information regarding the contents of these fields, please refer to Snapchat Business Help.

Required fields for Location Aware catalogs

Location Aware gives advertisers the opportunity to apply location information to their products in a catalog to increase relevance and accuracy for their Dynamic Ads campaigns. With Location Aware enabled, Snapchat is able to ingest latitude, longitude, and availability radius for each product, and dynamically serve ads to users that meet each product’s location criteria. For further information regarding this, please refer to Snapchat Business Help.

In order to take advantage of this feature, the following fields are required in the feed mapping:

address
availability_radius

Extra fields

Sometimes you need additional fields for data that you want to use with image template or for field transformations with liquid templating, but don't need to send to Snapchat. Or you might already have all the Snapchat custom_label fields in use. In these situations you can use the Smartly extra fields, extra_1 - extra_9. These fields allow you to map whatever data you want to those fields and use them with Image templates and with liquid templates for field transformations. These fields are not send to Snapchat.

Resolving missing image template when creating campaign with catalog

You recently added a new image template to your Snapchat catalog. Now you want to create a new campaign and ad using that template. But when in campaign creation, the image template you added is missing from the list.

When you add a new image template to a catalog, the feed that Smartly sends to Snapchat gets a new column, where each row in the feed will have a new link. This link leads to an image that uses the product and image template. If the image template does not show up for selection, it is usually due to one of the following issues.

The feed has not been refreshed: After adding a new image template, you need to refresh the catalog, so that Snapchat will be made aware of the new template. When you refresh the catalog, a new version of the feed with the image templates gets sent to snapchat. In turn, Snapchat returns the info that a new image template is now available, and then you can select it in campaign creation. To refresh the feed, go to the catalogs view in Smartly, search for your catalog, and select it. In the feed list, press the refresh button at the end of the catalog row. It will take a while, depending on how many rows and image templates there are in your catalog, to process the catalog. You can see from the status column when the feed is ready. After Status says "Up to date", recheck if the image template is available in campaign creation.
Every row in your feed is invalid: As image templates are represented as new columns in the feed, a common reason to not seeing an image template is because Snapchat has rejected every row from your feed. With no valid rows in feed, there is no information about products with the image template either. This is more of a symptom of a bigger problem, where everything in the feed is rejected by Snapchat, and can't be used for advertising. Common issues for this is that you are missing one of the required field, or you have values in the fields that are not allowed. You can see the status of the feed by going into the catalog view, and checking the status column for the feed. By clicking the feed status (e.g. "Up to Date"), you will see a list of warnings and errors in the feed. While warnings are good to get fixed, they will not block the use of the row. Errors however will make Snapchat discard the rows. The error names tell what the problem is, for example CAT_VALIDATION_ERROR_MISSING_REQUIRED_COLUMN_DESCRIPTION means that it is an error, and that the required column description did not exist. When you know the errors, you should check the feed you send to Smartly for any problems (in this case check description exists for all rows) or update the feed field mappings to correct errors.
Snapchat needs time before image template can be used: Snapchat might require time to ingest particularly big feeds. That is feeds that have a lot of products and a lot of image templates in them. For example if you have 1 million products in your feed and 8 image templates connected to the feed, that's 8 million pictures that Snapchat needs to download, approve and make available for use. In these cases, you have to wait until Snapchat have completed processing before the image template shows up for use. With the biggest feeds, this can take up to hours. It is recommended that you remove any image templates in the catalog that you are not using any longer, to hasten the processing of the feed. Also splitting catalogs into smaller parts would make each part process faster.

FAQ

I can't see any catalogs in the catalog listing view. / I get an error in the catalog listing view.

First make sure you have the needed permissions. You'll need to have either Organization admin rights (gives access to all catalogs under the Organization), or Catalog admin or Catalog Advertiser role to a specific catalog.

It is also possible that the connection between your Snapchat user and your Smartly user has gotten invalidated. Try reconnecting the Snapchat user by following the instructions here.

There is currently also an edge case, that leads to catalogs listing to fail loading. This is when user has Business admin rights, but no Organization admin rights. In these cases, either give Organization admin rights to user or remove the Business admin rights. We are working to solve the issue on supporting this combination of permissions correctly.

I can't see the feed in Snapchat.

This is normal. From Snapchat's point of view, the feed uploads are now "manual uploads" done by Smartly.

Can I see feed processing logs?

You can see the overall processing status of the latest processing and upload.

Can I use Liquid templating with Snapchat catalog feeds?

Yes, Snapchat catalog feed mappings support using dynamic fields, static text, and Liquid templating.

Can I use custom fields (extra fields) in Snapchat catalogs?

Yes, you can use the fields extra_1, extra_2,..., extra_9 similarly to any extra field in Meta catalogs., essentially to add extra information to image templates via feeds or use them as part of liquid templating. These fields are Smartly specific and won't be send to Snapchat. Unfortunately, at the moment you can't update the naming of these fields.

My catalogs are processing for too long, what can I do?

We recommend you to look into the best practices for decreasing feed processing times for large catalogs, which applies to both Facebook and Snapchat catalogs.

What is the size limit of the feed?

While there are no feed size limitations on Smartly, you will experience them from Snapchat. Currently Snapchat supports feeds up to 10 gigabytes. The limit is for the file that Snapchat downloads, so with zipped files (which Smartly is using) you can have even bigger feeds.

Also, according to the Snapchat documentation, there s a limit of maximum 10M products in a feed file.

Is there a limit on how many catalogs I can have under an Organization?

Yes, it is possible to have 200 catalogs under an Organization.

I'm receiving an Access Denied error when claiming the feed.

The feed is likely password-protected. You need to enter the access credentials for the feed in the URL field in the following format:

https://username:password@example.com/feed

The feed processing says "Error during upload notification" What is the issue?

+ The further details in the tooltip read "Snapchat::UploadFeedWorker::FailedUpload - Error code: FORBIDDEN, message: FORBIDDEN".

This kind of error is shown when the catalog authorizer doesn't have the required permissions to update the catalog. Please make sure the catalog authorizer has admin access to the catalog. You can update the access of current authorizer or change the authorizer to a user who has the needed permissions to the catalog.

If the above didn't solve the issue, it is also possible that the connection between your Snapchat user and your Smartly user has gotten invalidated. Try reconnecting the Snapchat user by following the instructions here.

Can I get notifications on possible catalog and feed issues?
Yes, please see Catalog feed processing error alerts -article for more details.

How do I use an Amazon S3 based data source?

Enter "s3://" (or the full URL) in the Data source field. After this, you see the additional configuration fields S3 region, AWS role ARN and AWS role external ID.

The feed processing failed with an error "Feeds::DropRateError", what should I do?

The feed processed failed, because the number of items in the feed dropped by over 50%. This functionality is known as "acceptable drop rate" and aims to prevent accidental removal of items from the catalog if there is an unwanted big drop in item count in the feed. Typically the drop could happen for example, if part of the content in data source is accidentally removed or Smartly only receives a partial file due network issues.

If you get this error, you should fix the feed and process it again (with the item count dropping less than 50%). If the drop was expected, you can click the "click here" link in the error message and the feed processing will allow drop as low as the item count was just recorded (but not any lower).

The rate is hardcoded to 50% and can't be adjusted for now. If this is causing issues for your, there is an opportunity to opt-out from this functionality.