Snap interactive app ads: playables, lenses and end cards the docs actually name

Snap’s Marketing API and business format pages document several interactive paths for app advertisers: App Install creatives that can attach a PLAYABLE media zip, AR Lenses, and App End Cards. A buyer should not brief a “Snap playable” unless the live creative type and package rules below are met. First public announcement dates for playable availability are not stated on the developer creatives page and remain unknown.

App Install + PLAYABLE package rules

Creatives (Snap Marketing API; accessed 19 September 2026) states that App Install attachments send users to download the app, and that for games a Media entity of type PLAYABLE can let users test the game before install via playable_media_properties inside app_install_properties.

Documented playable media properties:

• playable_media_id (required when used)
• playable_call_to_action: TRY_IT_OUT

Playable Resources on the same page:

• PLAYABLE media is a zip containing index.html and config.json
• No directory structure inside the zip—both files at the first directory level
• Max zip size 5 MB
• PlayCanvas is cited as a supported authoring path

Creative type for this path is APP_INSTALL (with optional playable). Related app surfaces on the same API page include App End Cards (2–10 image media IDs per OS) and SKOverlay for SKAdNetwork-enabled iOS ad squads.

Other interactive formats buyers confuse with playables

Snapchat Ad Formats & Specs lists AR Lenses as Snap’s camera-based interactive format (visible logo/brand name required on Face and World Lenses) alongside Single Image/Video, Collection, Story, Commercials and Sponsored Snaps. These are not substitutes for the PLAYABLE zip rules above.

Business Help Centre search captures also describe App Playables delivered as Single Image/Video, Story or AR Ads under App Promotion with App Install / App Purchase goals, portrait-only orientation (config.json value 1), and the same 5MB zip shape—treat the Marketing API creatives page as the delivery source of record for package structure when the Help Centre article is intermittently unreachable.

Who should act, and how

Playable producers and Snap buyers should:

1. Confirm the creative type is APP_INSTALL with a PLAYABLE media attachment—not a generic “interactive” Lens brief unless AR is intended.
2. Build a flat zip (index.html + config.json, ≤5MB) and CTA TRY_IT_OUT.
3. Decide separately whether App End Cards or Lenses are part of the flight.
4. Re-open the Marketing API creatives page before each new playable upload; do not rely on third-party spec blogs.

Our editorial inference: teams recycling MRAID network playables without flattening the archive or rewriting the CTA will fail Snap’s documented package shape first.

Limits of this record

Body-read of Snap Marketing API creatives documentation and the public ad-formats page. The Business Help Centre App Playables article returned a CSS error on fetch and was not fully body-read in this edition; package rules above follow the API page. Account entitlement and SKAN versus non-SKAN playable availability were not observed in a live Ads Manager.

Research checked 19 September 2026. Local draft; human editorial review and byline assignment pending.