Snapchat ads could become more personalized later this year

It would appear that Snapchat is looking to make its advertisements more targeted as we move further into the latter half of 2016. A new report from eMarketer (as reported by Business Insider) features Snapchat director of revenue operations Clement Xue, where he says that the company is looking at ways to implement behavioral targeting for advertisements sometime in Q3 of this year.

While that immediately brings up visions of Facebook and Google-type ads that seem to know what you viewed on the web just seconds before, it isn't quite that serious, at least not yet. In its early stages, Snapchat will only use behavioral targeting based on what their users do inside the app itself, so Snapchat won't necessarily know that you viewed that one weird item on Amazon and suddenly think that you need to see advertisements for something you'd never actually buy.

So, advertisements based on your web browsing won't be a thing right away. There's the potential for that later on down the road though, with Business Insider pointing to Snapchat's advertising API and the presence of a "log in with Snapchat" button beginning to pop up around the web. On the other side of the coin, Snapchat historically has been against advertisements of that nature, so whether or not ads that are personalized beyond users' Snapchat activity remains to be seen. Of course, Snapchat could always pull a WhatsApp, but we're thinking that may not be very good for business.

There's no specific word on when Snapchat will look to roll this functionality out, or if it's even targeting a Q3 2016 launch – when asked for comment, Snapchat simply declined. Still, it wouldn't surprise us to see Snapchat roll out some sort of targeted advertisement based on the Snaps users view most often, so stay tuned for more information.

VIA: Business Insider

SOURCE: eMarketer