Snapchat and Amazon recently united forces to direct consumers to Amazon’s e-commerce site from Snapchat’s social media platform and make headway in the market against competitors like Instagram and Pinterest.

How will the Snapchat-Amazon partnership affect the Snapchat app?

User experience

This collaboration introduced Snapchat’s visual search feature, which allows users to take photos of products or barcodes in real life, whether on the street or in a store. Snapchat then links the user to Amazon for purchase or price comparisons.

Revenue

Leaders in the marketing industry noted this partnership is a smart step for both brands as Snapchat provides a dedicated user base and Amazon offers a large e-commerce platform. For Snapchat, partnering with an e-commerce behemoth like Amazon allows the brand to save money and avoid building visual search technology in-house.

This collaboration may be an effort to increase monetization on the Snapchat platform. While the platform is growing and expected to welcome 1.2 million new users by 2022, eMarketer now predicts Snapchat will only generate $662.1 million this year, as opposed to the $1.03 billion eMarketer had estimated for 2018 last spring.

How will the Snapchat-Amazon partnership hold up against the competition?

While Instagram has been building its ad revenue through shopping tags in stories and their new streaming service, IGTV, Snapchat has been working hard to compete. Alongside efforts like the Nielsen partnership and Snapchat Shopping, the Snapchat-Amazon partnership is the latest punch thrown.

Snapchat currently holds 0.6% of the U.S. digital ad market, according to eMarketer, but 2019 and 2020 may be better years for Snapchat’s revenue as its recent addition of new advertising tools may entice more marketers. This collaboration could also threat brick-and-mortar shops if Amazon attracts even more consumers through Snapchat’s user base.

Snapchat advertising has been growing since June 2017, when the platform first added its programmatic ad platform to entice marketers. Time will tell how the Snapchat-Amazon partnership aids the platform’s revenue and user base.

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