Snap Emphasizes Commerce In Updates To Its Camera And AR Platforms

At Snap’s Partner Summit, the company announced a number of updates to the company’s developer tools and AR-focused Lens Studio, including several focused on bringing shopping deeper into the Snapchat experience.

Here are some of the highlights:

Scan, which has now been given more prominent placement inside the camera section of the app, has been upgraded with commerce capabilities with a feature called Screenshop. Users can now use their Snap Camera to scan a friend’s outfit, after which they’ll quickly be served up shopping recommendations from hundreds of brands. The features are part of a broader effort to intelligently suggest lenses to users based on what their camera is currently focused on.

Businesses will now be able to establish public profiles inside Snapchat, where users can see all of their different offerings, including Lenses, Highlights, Stories and items for sale through Shop functionality.

On the augmented reality side, Snap is continuing to emphasize business solutions with API integrations that make lenses smarter. Retailers will be able to use the Business Manager to integrate their product catalogs so that users can only access try-on lenses for products that are currently in stock.