Snap launches new augmented reality commerce and shopping experience

January 27 2022, 10:43 am | BY Ricki Green | No Comments

Snap has announced a new product to enhance its AR shopping capabilities, making it easier for Snapchatters to buy and marketers to evaluate performance.

Snap is leading augmented reality, with over 200 million people engaging with AR on our platform every day – across a variety of personal, fun, and often useful experiences that span commerce, entertainment, education, and the arts. Snapchatters engage with AR more than 6 billion times per day.

Over the past year, Snap has centered on AR shopping as a key company initiative – offering brands real-time AR try-on experiences that reach millions of Snapchatters. From trying on makeup, to shoes, to watches, to glasses, AR shopping is a key emerging part of how our community engages with our app.

On Wednesday, January 26, Snap rolled out Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses, a major upgrade to AR shopping – to make AR shopping simpler and more engaging for consumers, and easier to build, scale, and optimize for brands:

• For Snapchatters – simplified, more useful AR try-on shopping interface – quickly see product info like prices, descriptions, and unique URLs to purchase with new Lens Product Cards as you try on products.

• For brands – real-time results – instant feedback on which products our Gen Z and Millennial audience is drawn to (good for R&D)

• Plus, expanding our simple Lens Web Builder– now beauty brands can create Shopping Lenses in as fast as two minutes– with more verticals coming soon.

Ulta Beauty is a great example of a beta tester seeing success – its has been activating an “always-on” AR approach, running Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses (videos) around the clock. Ulta has generated $6M in incremental purchases on Snapchat, and has seen over 30 million product try-ons within a two week span.

Details on the 3 launch items:

1. For users – New AR Shopping User Experience

– Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses make shopping easier and more engaging for Snapchatters:

– You can now see key product information and SKU-specific purchase capability, including real-time dynamically updated price and color details. This gives Snapchatters all the pertinent product information quickly, as they simply tap on the Lens Product Card to purchase each individual item.

2. For brands – Real Time Results + R&D

– These new AR Shopping Lenses are “catalog-powered” because they are directly linked to a company’s product catalog – this lets us deliver fast and real-time analytics back to a brand.

– This can help brands track consumer trends and product engagement, offering marketers immediate insights to help educate their research and development plans. Marketers can now leverage Snapchat’s AR try-on as an early indication on which products Snapchatters are engaging with, and utilize these signals when ideating on targeting strategies and early-on decision making for product development – down to the SKU level.

– This feature also allows Snapchat to optimize delivery of a businesses’ Shopping Lens to Snapchatters most likely to purchase each item. In combination with our newly released auction optimization towards purchases for AR Lenses, brands are seeing meaningful increases in purchases and efficiency.

Brand Examples:
• Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses are already delivering business results in beta tests, further cementing Snap’s leading position in AR shopping. Beta partners leading in this type of AR innovation include Ulta Beauty and MAC Cosmetics.

– Ulta Beauty has been activating an always-on AR approach, and with Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses Ulta Beauty has generated $6M in incremental purchases on Snapchat and has seen over 30 million product try-ons within a two week span.

– MAC Cosmetics – with the use of catalog-powered Shopping Lenses, MAC Cosmetics has seen 1.3 million try-on experiences at a cost of 0.31 cents per product trial (less than 1 cent!) and has secured 17X higher lift in purchases among females, 2.4x higher lift in brand awareness and 9x higher lift in purchase intent.

3. Two minute Lens Creation –

• Last year we launched Lens Web Builder, a free web creation tool where any brand can create an AR experience to run on Snapchat. However, to date there weren’t streamlined AR shopping templates.

• We’ve now made it so brands can generate a commerce Lens in as fast as two minutes and Beauty brands can do so in just a few clicks.

• At launch, this quick click accessibility in Lens Web Builder will be available to Beauty brands and will roll out to other product verticals in the coming months. All product brands can leverage catalog-powered Shopping Lenses with Lens Studio.

• Snap continues to invest in self-serve creation tools, offering the ability for easy, effective AR Lenses to be built quickly in minutes.