What Happened
Snapchat is set to improve its location-based ad products by striking a data deal with local discovery and recommendation service Foursquare. This deal will provide brand marketers with access to Foursquare’s location data, allowing them to serve branded Geofilters in a more targeted manner. According to Snapchat, the deal will open “thousands” of locations and categories, such as parks or museums, for brands to buy ads against.
In related news, Bloomberg reports that Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has confidentially filed for its IPO after months of speculations. The company is reportedly seeking seeking to raise as much as $4 billion at a valuation of between $25 billion and $35 billion, making it the largest U.S. technology IPO since Facebook’s debut in 2012 with a value of $81.2 billion.
What Brands Should Do
With this partnership, Snapchat has shown once again it is keen to partner with ad tech companies in order to meet brand marketers’ increasing demand more data and measurement for digital campaigns. With improved location data, Snapchat advertisers can now better tailor their campaigns in more granular way to reach their targeted audience. For example, a retailer may zero in on a specific store location inside a mall with an on-premise exclusive Geofilter to encourage store visits.
As Snapchat continues to improve its ad products to match its rapid growth, brands need to consider getting on Snapchat to reach its young-skewing users via not only standard video ads, but also more unconventional ad units such as custom Geofilters and branded selfie lenses.
