Six years on one Snapchat account: what I learned about Saudi seasonality

The number first

I ran a Saudi perfume retailer's Snapchat account for six years and seven months without a break. Straight from the platform dashboard:

The most important number is not one of those four.

ROAS over the final twelve months was 5.66 against 4.19 for the whole period. The account improved with time instead of eroding، which is the opposite of what happens to most ad accounts.

Why most accounts erode

Ad accounts erode for two reasons, and both work slowly enough that no single month shows them:

The audience saturates. An ad someone has seen three times stops working, and the platform keeps serving it because it performed well in week one. Cost climbs gradually while the campaign still looks healthy in the dashboard.

The season changes and the campaign does not. What works in Ramadan does not work in summer, nor in back-to-school, nor in White Friday. An account run on one campaign all year wins two seasons and loses four.

What I did instead

What this means for your account

If your account returned well this month, the question is not "what is the ROAS?" but "is it higher or lower than it was a year ago?"

An account returning 4.0 today that returned 6.0 a year ago is an account losing ground, however healthy the dashboard looks.