Q&A: Snap cites ‘meaningful impact’ from AR to brands’ bottom lines

The trend: Snap’s development of augmented reality (AR) tools have helped it become a major player in marketing.

We sat down with Carolina Arguelles Navas, Snap’s global AR product strategy and product marketing lead, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to discuss the promise of AR and other matters. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation.

Insider Intelligence: What kind of results have you seen [from AR] with brands like Puma in terms of uplift, for example?

Carolina Arguelles Navas: With AR, we're seeing that 80% of consumers are more confident with their purchases after buying. And three in four are actually less likely to return [the item] because of their AR experience before purchasing. So it's having a meaningful impact on actual bottom lines in terms of not only purchases, but also returns. With Puma, we're not just allowing them to bring these experiences to reach a large audience on Snap, but also to its own retail app and website. We're excited [about] how to take this technology and bring it to shoppers everywhere, not just on Snapchat.

II: Snap issued a profit warning not too long ago. So how do you see AR maybe helping drive revenue? It's still very experimental, and that's the kind of thing that tends to get cut when budgets get cut.

CAN: When we really look at what it’s doing with businesses, where we see a transition from experimental to always on is specifically on the bottom line.

That's actually what helps to prove to a business why it should continue to invest in this. You have brands like Dior [that] are seeing a 6.2X return on ad spend. Dior is a brand that went from experimentation with AR with us a few years ago into being one of the most leaned-in businesses building AR experiences across many different SKUs in its catalog.

We really believe that if we can deliver better value to our business partners, that will deepen our relationship with them and open up more opportunities for advertising.

Go further: Read the full conversation.