by According to a story in Variety, Snapchat is targeting Hollywood studios for Sponsored Lenses, a new ad unit they’re planning on rolling out at the end of this month.
For those who are uninitiated, Lenses is a Snapchat feature that allows people to add unique special effects to their selfies. The most popular – or at least the one that’s received the most coverage – is one that lets you alter your photo or video so it looks like you’re vomiting a rainbow. Because…sure.
It makes a lot of sense for Snapchat to go after the studios for this. Those studios are always trying to find new ways to reach just the demographic that is all about Snapchat and some studios have already begun experimenting with Snapchat, either though their ad products or organically. And Snapchat surely sees Hollywood as a deep well of ad money, much of which can easily be spent on experimental executions like this.
To me this makes the most sense when combined with something like Snapchat’s Geofilters that only unlock certain effects or stickers when someone is at a certain location. So imagine an exclusive lens for, as an example, Pan that only unlocked when you were at a theater playing that movie and which added a jungle background or something like that which is contextual to the movie. That creates a strong call-to-action for the studios to include in their pre-release marketing and is an incentive for people to go and get that exclusive Lens. MarketingLand has more on Sponsored Geofilters, which were introduced earlier this year.
More to come if or when this actually comes to fruition.
