Snapchat has had difficult moments. And since almost everyone in the market is copying its features, Snapchat needs to propel ahead by differentiating itself from the competition.
To do this, Snapchat is rolling out three new ad products to its offering lineup. They are meant to seek advantages from the already accepted lenses and also geofilters. The new products include World Lenses, Audience Lenses, and Smart Geofilters.
First up, is the World Lens. It's an addition to Snapchat's Sponsored Lens which has been good in converting users' selfies into ads. By utilizing Sponsored World Lenses, Snapchat is allowing advertisers to frame content for the rest of the photos, including faces.
To make it useful, Snapchat introduces four types of World Lenses: one with 2D or 3D characters or product appear floating in a photo; the action based lenses which prompt something to happen while tapping on an AR figure, ; an "interaction" World Lens; and an environmental lens which adds effects and additional lights to the photo.
Initially at its launch, not all World Lenses are available.
The next is the Audience Lenses. These will allow advertisers to buy regional targeted Lenses for the first time. Through the Audience Lens, advertisers will be guaranteed a number of impressions.
The third ad product is Smart Geofilters which is like an advanced version of its existing Geofilters. This ad type allows forward advertisers' brand to appear on swiping left or right on the camera. Geofiters have already built a good fan base within the Snapchat community, and this is where Snapchat wants to put its bet on.
The Smart Geofilter can automatically add locations or other real-time information to any Geofilter. And since it is automatically updated, advertisers can include any name to the ad.
In additions to the three mentioned updates, Snapchat said that it has made some improvements to its ad business zone. This includes speeding up the production timelines for Sponsored Lenses. Earlier, it took Snapchat eight weeks to finish, this time Snapchat finished them in six.
While Snapchat has less users than Instagram, let alone Facebook, it's already boasting an increasing number of users. And the updates are meant to bring more interactive contents to the platform, aiming to bring even more active users to the app.
One of the very first companies to use the new lenses is Warner Bros. Entertainment and MGM Studios, which are releasing the teen romance "Everything, Everything."
According to reports, regular Snapchat users launch the app at least 18 times a day, and spend about 30 minutes each day using it on a daily basis. As of 2017, there are around 3 billion Snaps created every day, a 500 million increase since the same period a year before.
Snap said that the company is partnering with creative teams from big advertising firms to create the campaigns for household brands. The idea is to have something different for advertisers.