Snap targets AR and the potential for marketing

Sahail Ashraf posted on 7 December 2022

Chances are, you’re not using AR to its full potential at the moment. Now’s the time to get going. Snap has released a new report that proves it is a key growth area for social media marketing.

Snap has been a pioneer in the way AR (augmented reality) is used on social media. So it is no surprise that it is looking to the future. A recent report that Snap created in conjunction with Breakthrough Research looked at how AR is currently received by shoppers, and what the future holds.

Snap explained the study as follows:

“Across 7,500 respondents in US, UK, DE and covering shopper journeys within the Auto, Beauty, Entertainment, Fashion Retail, and Travel verticals, we uncovered how consumer attitudes and behaviors towards brands shift when they imagine themselves going through a shopper journey with AR as a part of it.”

Out of this work a ton of data has been created, with some real insights into what is shaping up to be a very exciting future with AR.

The findings

There is a lot of good news here if AR is a part of your marketing strategy (if it isn’t, we will tackle that in a moment), with some encouraging numbers.

For beauty and personal care shoppers, for example, Snap states that there is a $24.9 billion increase in spending when AR is part of the experience. This is among the 13-40 age group. This is a clear indicator that the AR experience helps in this particular sector. Used carefully, it can influence buying decisions.

A similar impact can be found in the fashion vertical, with an $11 billion plus spend increase when AR is used by brands. The study digs deep and finds more granular proof that AR makes a big difference to consumers.

For example, it finds that around 66% of consumers spend more than they normally would in the fashion vertical when AR is a factor. And crucially, it seems AR plays a big part in consumers actually completing purchases rather than abandoning carts.

Travel is a vertical that really benefits from AR. Snap found that:

“For Travel, Snapchatters expect to spend more than they typically would when AR is a part of their travel planning journey. This is because AR helps them be more confident in making decisions about the trip and ultimately planning longer trips by adding travel excursions or other add-ons to the itinerary.”

But we don’t use AR

We will get to that in a minute. Firstly, it’s important to understand Snap’s role in all of this. Snap orginally created Lens to have fun. Users could put filters and so on in place to make their chats more exciting. This was essentially what the whole thing was about when snap first came on the scene.

According to Snap:

“Although Snapchat first created Lenses because they were a fun and entertaining way to enhance the way we communicate with our friends and family, the technology has evolved from being just a toy to a fully utilitarian tool that brands can leverage to drive impact for their businesses.”

If you’re not using this kind of technology yet, the above data from the report should convince you that it’s probably a good idea to get going.

There are plenty of tutorials at Snap and therefore no excuse not to get into using its technology. Even if you focus on just creating a filter or two and then encouraging your customers to use them, that’s a start.

Pushing to create AR experiences for your customers is the only way to tap into what Snap is quite rightly seeing as a huge growth area for ecommerce.

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