Snap Map ads and full-app takeovers: Snapchat's premium formats

For years, Snapchat's premium ads were sold on being first: First Snap, First Story, First Lens, the opening ad of someone's day. In 2026 Snap went bigger in two directions. Total Snap Takeover hands a single brand the first ad in every part of the app. Promoted Places puts brands on the Snap Map, where people go when they are deciding where to go, and in May it reached the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia first.

Promoted Places: putting branches on the Map

Snap trialled Promoted Places in the US in 2024 with McDonald's and Taco Bell. On 6 May 2026 it announced the format for the Middle East and North Africa, with Saudi Arabia as the launch market. A business buying it gets:

• Sponsored pins on the Map, which can include 3D animation.
• A sponsored place profile for each location.
• Map effects.
• Reporting on promoted place impressions, place opens and the actions people took.

Snap also announced Place Partnerships, covering more than 200 partner locations. The launch brands were Almarai; Starbucks, operated in the region by Alshaya, which activated more than 350 of its Saudi stores during Ramadan 2026; and Masar Makkah. Almarai's Ramadan campaign, run with the agency Starcom across Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam, paired Promoted Places with an augmented reality world. The brand and agency reported 207.9 million impressions and 15 million people reached.

Promoted Places are not self-serve: Snap's help centre directs businesses to their Snap sales contact. From the US, Snap reports a 65 percent lower cost per incremental visit, measured by InMarket, and more than 20 million incremental visits by early 2026. It also says more than 400 million people use the Snap Map every month.

Total Snap Takeover: every tab, one brand

Total Snap Takeover launched on 24 March 2026. It gives a brand the first ad slot in each of the app's tabs: the Map, Chat, the camera, Stories and Spotlight. MediaPost described the package as Promoted Places on the Map, Sponsored Snaps in Chat, Lenses and filters in the camera, tiled story ads in Stories, and Snap Ads and product ads across Stories and Spotlight. Snap's case rests on the finding that 97 percent of Snapchatters visit several tabs in a session.

Snap has not said which markets can buy the takeover, or whether it is sold only through its sales team. Guaranteed first slots usually are, so the regional Snap team is the place to ask.

Formats still in testing

• Offers, in beta since March, build a deal into a Snap Ad and run in Spotlight and Stories. Snap has not named the markets.
• For dynamic product ads, Snap is testing vertical carousels, product-level video, and product ads aimed at several audience segments at once.

Ramadan, Snap Souq and National Day

Snap now builds products around the region's biggest moments. For Ramadan 2026 it ran its fifth AR Ramadan Mall, with five districts and 11 brands across the Middle East, and added Snap Souq, a Saudi-only experience featuring NiceOne, Abdul Latif Jameel, Rama Clinics and Stars Smile. Be careful with the often-repeated figure of 16.8 million shoppers for the mall: it is from 2025, not 2026. Ahead of Saudi National Day, Snap published insights suggesting people start shopping weeks before the day, but it did not launch a new product for it.

Formats that are older than you might think

• First Story, the first story ad of the day, was piloted in Saudi Arabia and the UAE ahead of Eid al-Fitr in 2023, then rolled out worldwide.
• First Snap was announced in May 2025.
• Sponsored AI Lenses launched in April 2025. Gucci's, in February 2026, ran in the UAE and Saudi Arabia among other markets.

The commercial backdrop

Snap told investors that geopolitical tensions in the Middle East cost it an estimated 20 to 25 million dollars of revenue in March 2026, and its guidance for the following quarter assumed similar conditions. Its results do not publish user numbers for the region, though its Saudi team continues to cite 26 million people in the Kingdom.

Putting these formats to work

• If your business has many branches, such as restaurants, cafés, pharmacies or shops, ask Snap about Promoted Places in Saudi Arabia, and time them for the moments people head out: Ramadan evenings, Eid, National Day and the summer.
• Keep your branch data tidy. Names, locations and opening hours all feed the Map.
• Save Total Snap Takeover for launches big enough to justify owning a whole day, and judge it on brand lift rather than clicks.
• Book tentpole formats early, with Ramadan, Eid, national days and the region's shopping seasons marked on the calendar well ahead.

If you are considering a Snap Map campaign for your branches in Saudi Arabia, or a takeover for a major launch, ALXO would be glad to help you think through the timing and the creative.