Snapchat’s end goal is to monetize fully as it has scaled up to a respectable size which is apparently bigger than Twitter. This next move by the company is in that aim of creating ad revenue for the company which has been done in a clever way.
The company filed a patent on January last year that seeks to use object recognition to identify objects in your snaps so as to serve you with sponsored filters, coupons or ads. For example in the patent document, if you take a snap of a cup of coffee you will be served with a coupon that has a discount on the next cup to be redeemed in the restaurant.
Other types of filters include ones that could be animated or play theme tunes where in this example of a snap of the famous Empire State building where if you apparently take a photo on the south side of the building, you will be served with King Kong’s back (if you watched the movie, you will get this)
This move by Snapchat will go hand in hand with their other unique product offerings which include the likes of sponsored geofilters, lenses and 3V advertising . In the case of sponsored geofilters and lenses, advertisers can set geofenced filters and lenses that target specific audiences. For 3V advertising, advertisers can create adverts that are portrait only that would go well with the rumoured adverts in between snaps. The inclusion of a future where our snaps will be used as ad target material is sure interesting and would mean anything that you upload on Snapchat will be used to serve you ads.
