Camera company, Snap Inc. is taking the shopping experience one notch higher with AR technology. It has launched a slew of new technologies that will advance the way brands can bring products to their customers through AR.

Since January of last year, more than 250 million Snapchatters have engaged with AR shopping Lenses more than 5 billion times. ZenniOptical’s AR Lenses have been tried on over 60 million times by Snapchatters. Lenses that used true-size technology drove a 42 percent higher return on ad spend compared to Lenses without. 

As Snapchatters love using AR for try-on, Snap continued to bolster its platform capabilities by supporting new product categories and making them incredibly realistic.  

Explaining it further, Gaurav Jain, Head of APAC Business Expansion at Snap said, “At Snap our vision is all about AR and it presents the next major shift in computing. We have always focused on designing technology that augments the real world and we believe that this approach is a compelling and the healthiest path forward. Snap Camera is our biggest competitive advantage. It helps augment what people seek in the real world with what is available to them in the digital world. People already use SnapChat and AR to shop but now we are announcing more ways for brands to bring their products to customers through the AR.” 

“AR shopping actually becomes a fun way to browse, shop and buy products from brands and retailers of all sizes. AR is transforming e-commerce. It is an engaging way to market products to our community who already loves AR. Through this, the brands can create better try-on experiences that are more likely to convert and ensure minimal returns and all of this using existing catalog focus,” he further added.

What’s New?

Here is the list of new technologies introduced by Snap:-

?    Snap 3D Asset Manager: It makes it faster and easier for businesses to build augmented reality shopping experiences. Brands can now request, manage, and optimize 3D models for any product in their catalog. Now, Shopping Lenses can be created in seconds, and at no additional cost. This will increase conversions and reduce returns and brands can create highly converting try-on experiences while ensuring minimal returns thanks to Snap’s size prediction technology. 

?    Introducing a new kind of shopping Lens for trying on outfits without ever having to change clothes, powered by our AR Image Processing Technology.

?    Dress Up: A new destination on Snapchat that brings together the best of AR fashion and try-on from creators, retailers, and fashion brands all in one place. Available in Lens Explorer, or soon just one tap away from the Snap Camera in AR Bar, Dress Up invites people to browse, discover, and share new looks from around the world. Snapchatters can also easily return to the products they love because Snap has enabled the ability to update user shopping preferences in profile settings. This will be the first dedicated surface for fashion experiences on Snapchat.

?    Camera Kit for AR Shopping: Snap’s offering its commerce partners a new opportunity to bring the best of Snap’s camera for AR try-on right to their own apps and sites with Camera Kit for AR Shopping. Camera Kit for AR Shopping is an AR SDK that brings Snap’s try-on Lenses into retailers and brands’ product detail pages to enhance the digital shopping experience for their customers. Camera Kit for AR Shopping works across Android and iOS, and will soon work on websites too.

“We have also launched a Camera Kit for AR shopping which means retailers and brands can use our try-on tech directly onto their own apps and websites,” he stated.

Tiffany & Co. is embracing this technology to build an upcoming Lens where their signature ‘Bird on a Rock’ broach gleams and takes flight. With this, AR jewelry try-on can truly sparkle.

 Virtual Try-Ons

Snapchat has made the shopping experience personalized, accessible, and fun with friends. Through AR, it’s possible to shop and explore clothing, accessories, beauty products, and home goods. 

Virtual try-on has helped in lowering returns and enabled a higher conversion rate for brands. Snap will be introducing new AI-powered shopping Lenses for trying on outfits without ever having to change clothes.

The new technology enables commerce partners to build try-on experiences in mere minutes by leveraging the product images that brands and retailers already have in their catalogs on Snapchat. And by using advanced AI, there’s no need to create any 3D assets, saving weeks of time and effort. Snapchatters can visualize how an item will look and if the color is right. 

Association with Retailers

Snap has worked with multiple retailers in India like Nykaa, SUGAR, OnePlus, Samsung, Puma and Reebok to name a few. Here are a few case studies which show how these brands have benefited with partnering with Snap:-

Perfetti Van Melle Chupa Chups Fun Lens Prevailed with 1.77 pc Share Rate - Perfetti Van Melle Chupa Chups has always believed in sharing happiness with children of all ages. Taking this thought forward, the brand wanted to reach more users and increase the user engagement on the Snapchat platform.

Staying true to the spirit of creating global influential fun brands, Perfetti Van Melle Chupa Chups with Snapchat created a Fun Lens for their teenage audience to celebrate Friendship Day across India. The audience was able to use a Snap code to unlock this Fun Lens and catch over 20 Chupa Chups in 15 seconds. 

The brand saw a 1.71 percent share rate and a 1.91 percent save rate, which translated to approximately 50,000+ shares and 54,000+ saves. 

"Perfetti values innovation, we have done it time and time again in our products, but we wanted to translate innovation through engagements to our young audience. Snapchat and Tyroo helped us create a unique experience which allowed us to reach out to a large audience set. We saw high engagements and a new way to promote our products,"  stated Paritosh Gupta, Associate Director Marketing and Digital Lead, Perfetti Van Melle.

ITC's YiPPee Noodles Saw a 95 pc Increase in Brand Association on Snapchat - The instant noodle category is extremely competitive and primarily caters to people in the 13-16 age range. ITC has found that this audience segment needs more options to choose from-continuous change, easy to make and variety in their snacks. Equipped with these key drivers, ITC’s instant noodles brand, YiPPee! Noodles introduced packaging which includes two flavor sachets per pack, making them the perfect ‘mood’ pack and thereby creating a noodle flavor choice for all of your moods.

The brand wanted to spread the message to its target audience and turned to Snapchat as the medium of choice to promote the product.

Considering the age of the target groups and the nature of the product, ITC determined that an interactive and engaging campaign would be the best way to spread the message. They decided to create a full scope marketing campaign on Snapchat by covering Story ads, Snap ads and a Biddable Lens.

The Biddable Lens created a memorable fun experience for the young Snapchatters while the ad placements helped improve reach and redirect traffic to a unique set of recipes curated by the brand to highlight unique product features like multiple flavors and non-lump texture.

“The Snap and Story Ads have been a great addition to our media mix, especially for our brands that target a younger demographic. We have received best in class engagement rates and a substantial lift in the brand metrics on the platform for our campaign. In an era of attention poor consumer behavior, the Snap Lens is one of the best engagement devices, that enables deep engagement with brand assets (be it the pack, mnemonic or a jingle) and hence presents a great opportunity to drive mental availability for brands,” said Anushree Ghosh, Head of Digital, ITC Foods.

Swiggy’s Growth Scaled with 11K+ New Orders Each Month - Swiggy is India's largest and most valuable online food ordering and delivery platform. Founded in 2014, the brand is based out of Bengaluru, India and as of December 2019, is operating out of 500+ Indian cities. The innovative technology, large and nimble delivery service, and exceptional consumer focus at the brand enabled a host of benefits that includes lightning-fast deliveries, live order tracking and no restrictions on the order amount, all while having the pleasure of enjoying your favorite meal wherever you'd like it.

The goal of the campaign was to help deliver as many new food orders each month using the app while also maintaining the lowest cost per customer acquisition. Their KPI to measure the success of this campaign was to achieve as many first orders each month at the lowest cost per acquired user. The brand tested and invested in advertising on Snapchat based on performance of a publisher through various parameters such as average order value, frequency of order, coupon redemption and type of restaurant chosen for delivery, all indicators of where the brand should continue to invest.

The brand leveraged multiple Snap ad products and found great success with Snap Ads. They used Snap Ads to run app-install campaigns and experienced great success, not only in terms of number of installs, but also in terms of the quality of users. 

They used a combination of lookalike and predefined audience targeting to effectively reach Snapchatters who were more likely to engage.

The brand used Snapchat’s Ad platform for over a year and went live with ‘always on’ programmatic performance campaigns using ‘Story and Snap Ad placements’ to deliver positive results.

The brand witnessed an 18 percent growth in first orders during June to December 2019 and approximately a 49 percent increase in first orders when compared to June to December 2018. The brand continued to grow with Snapchat and their growth scaled month over month, delivering a minimum of 11k+ new orders each month.

"At Swiggy, we are always on the lookout to test new platforms to expand our customer base. By partnering with Snapchat, we were successfully able to reach incremental Gen Z's in densely populated urban areas resulting in a higher number of new users from this super relevant user segment. Snapchat Story and Snap ads proved to be an effective and efficient platform allowing us to boost our performance campaigns and showcase our creative prowess," asserted Sudeep Bansal, AVP Marketing, Swiggy.

Future Plans

As SnapChat is a tech company, so it eanavor everyday is to build upon the latest technology and to bring the best to its consumers and businesses.

"There is a feature of promote places on the Ads Manager and it shows your ad to the people in the vicinity of your store and directs them to your physical store. If we have to build on this even further, we might introduce a feature where consumers can check the experiences of previous consumers at that store. So, basically Snap Map can itself become very personalized and interactive. In short, the Snap Map can become the digital home for SMEs in India because that is where the consumers are. It is a real-looking map," he explained.

"Everything on Snap, be it from a consumer point and or from a ad product point, is build for businesses for all sizes. A lot of our self-served offerings on our ad platforms are build exactly keeping in mind that what if hundreds and thousands of businesses want to build their businesses on Snap Map and want to advertise and is there a technology efficient way to support all of them and the plan over 12-24 months is also to bring in a lot of hand-holding to this entire journey," he further added.