Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Snapchat wants to show you ads based on the objects in your Snaps

By

geofilters
Snapchat
Snapchat has just filed for a patent on technology that would allow the growing social network to recognize objects in the images are you posting and show you advertisements based on those objects. Think of it as a visual equivalent of a business buying an ad on Facebook targeting users who like coffee, only in this case rather than basing the ad off a search or method, the ad would be based off the images that the user sees.

So for example, say that Microsoft wanted to buy ads space to target Apple users. They could in theory serve ads to users viewing images on Snapchat in which an Apple product was visible. The patent for this technology was filed in January last year, and was published officially by the U.S. patent office earlier this month, Business Insider was the first to notice the patent and its significance.

Recommended Videos

Snapchat has been riding a wave of popularity as more and more older users join their younger relatives on the image/video-based social network. The company, like many social media companies before it, has been looking for ways to monetize its free-to-use network of users through ads that businesses can purchase to target users relevant to them.

Snapchat already allows businesses to filter their ads based on a user’s location, and that technology combined with something like this patent, which identifies objects within images and serves ads based on those, could prove to be an incredibly powerful marketing tool for local businesses looking to target people within a specific area.

Businesses would bid auction-style for the right to display their ad on certain objects, similarly to how businesses bid on keywords now on modern ad networks like Google or Facebook.

The potential benefit to Snapchat is immense, and if anything gives you a clue into how much the company thinks this could be worth, in a leaked investor presentation from earlier this year, the company said it aims to dramatically boost revenue from the $59 million earned in 2015 to over $500 million in 2017.

There is no word on when this technology might make its appearance on the social network, and no official comment from Snapchat either. Patented tech often never sees the light of day, but if we had to put our money on it, we would expect to see this one at some point down the line. If this technology was one of the dramatic ways the company is looking to boost revenue, as referenced in that leaked investor presentation, then one would have to assume it will be rolled out no later than early 2017.

Download for iOS Download for Android

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Anthony Thurston
Anthony Thurston
Contributor
Anthony is an internationally published photographer based in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Specializing primarily in…
Doctors want you to swallow this vibrating pill to help you poop
Vibrant smart capsule in hand

Instead of popping in laxatives, you might soon find yourself ingesting a drug-free smart capsule that vibrates in your guts to solve your constipation woes. The folks at the Medical College of Georgia -- Augusta University have published fresh research that claims that a vibrating capsule “appears to double the ability for adults struggling with debilitating chronic constipation to defecate more normally.” The news comes just days after another team of researchers unveiled a strip you can pee on to potentially identify cancer.

The capsule excites the muscle walls, which leads to gradual contraction of the colon that creates a peristalsis-like movement, stirring the material inside and allowing defecation. For the unaware, peristalsis refers to the contraction and relaxation of muscle walls in a tube, allowing movement of edible items down the food pipe and the digested material down the intestine.

Read more
Is it time to shut your mouth? This smart wearable will let you know
wearable device for measuring vocal stress.

Vocal cord damage is a fairly common occurrence among music stars. From the likes of yesteryear icons such as Freddy Mercury and Julie Andrews to modern-day legends like Adele and Justin Timberlake, they all have had to battle vocal cord ailments — requiring surgeries to fix and weeks of not speaking to get their voice back to normal.

The folks over at Northwestern University have developed a sensor that warns you every time you speak loud enough that it stresses your vocal organs and the surrounding tissue. This could help avoid injuries that can permanently change your voice and give some much-needed relief to the voice box and other connected tissues that play a role in your speaking, reading, and singing abilities. It's the latest in a string of recent wearable health advances, following news of a smart necklace that can help you stop smoking.
There's a science to being quiet

Read more
Your next Apple Pencil could select colors from real-world objects
Drawing with the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro (2022).

Apple recently filed for a patent that indicates a major feature update is coming to a possible future generation of the Apple Pencil. The patent is for image sensors that can detect colors on real-world surfaces, plus their physical texture. If implemented, new Apple Pencils could make it easier than ever before for artists and designers to find and match color samples without needing to search for them digitally.

The patent, spotted first by Patently Apple, indicates that the sensor would be toward to tip of the pencil, meaning that to get a color sample, all someone would need to do is position the "drawing" end of the smart pencil toward an object to seamlessly sample its color and texture onto a paired Apple device. If brought to Apple Pencils, the feature would be a huge step forward for digital artists.

Read more