Snapchat (Snap) recently held its Partner Summit 2021 announcing a range of new innovations designed to deepen engagement, onboard more developers and creators, while giving businesses and ad partners new ways to leverage Snapchat.

Snap reaches more than 500 million people globally and on average, more than five billion Snaps are created every day making the Snapchat camera one of the most used in the world.

New AR try-on experiences

Snap is introducing new Augmented Reality (AR) try-on experiences with fashion partners. Online luxury fashion retailer, FARFETCH uses 3D Body Mesh and voice-enabled controls to enable Snapchatters to say what items they’re looking to browse and try on in AR.

Prada is tapping into new gesture recognition capabilities that let shoppers signal to the camera when they want to try on another item. Brands and businesses can drive valuable, scalable solutions through the Snapchat camera.

New ‘wrist-tracking technology’ kicks off AR try-on for watches and jewellery, while new ‘True Size’ technology enables accurate sizing for eyewear and sunglasses.

Through Snap’s partnership with Perfect Corp, The Estée Lauder Companies will be among the first to leverage Snap’s AR Shopping platform tools. By integrating their product catalogue through Snap’s API in Business Manager, brands like M·A·C Cosmetics can build Lenses from new AR Shopping templates and publish them to Snapchat, based on real-time product inventory.

Through Public Profiles for Businesses, brands can establish a permanent presence on Snapchat to showcase their Lenses, Highlights, and Stories. Public Profiles also let businesses enable browsing, try-on and buying through Shops, turning Snapchat into a new point of sale.

Introducing API-powered Lenses

Brands can soon seamlessly build AR Shopping Lenses by simply uploading their product catalogues and 3D product assets through our API in Business Manager. Snapchatters using these Lenses will get real-time product and pricing updates, and brands will see new analytics on Lens usage. In addition to shopping, partners like Major League Baseball and Strava will now feed real-time scores and stats right into Lenses through its API.

Scan button comes to the forefront

Scan enables Snapchatters to search through millions of Lenses by matching what is seen through the camera to the most relevant AR experiences on Snapchat. More than 170 million Snapchatters Scan the world around them every month.

Snap is now placing the Scan button on the main camera screen with new categories of intelligence to Scan. Screenshop gives shopping recommendations from hundreds of brands when Snapchatters Scan a friend’s outfit, and Snapchatters can select photos from Memories to Scan with Screenshop.

Updated Lens Studio with more advanced tools

Lens Studio is a free desktop application that enables creators, developers, or businesses combine a range of technical and creative capabilities to build, publish, and promote Lenses.

Snap is updating Lens Studio with advanced tools that empower creators to build even more robust, innovative Lenses across gaming, education, shopping, and more, and refine them over time. A new feature, Connected Lenses, allows friends to interact together in real time, whether located in the same room or in a different country.

In addition, Lens Studio now offers 3D Body Mesh, Cloth Simulation, and a Visual Effects Editor, which make AR look and move more realistically. SnapML now enables creators to import their own custom ML models that analyse and generate audio, so Lenses can respond to sound. Visual classification brings the power of Scan to Lens Studio, allowing creators to build Lenses that understand more than 500 categories of objects.