Brands get more Snapchat capabilities with new tool kit

Brief:

Snap released a developer tool that lets brands and publishers share web content to its Snapchat image-messaging app. Creative Kit for Web extends functions that previously were only available for mobile apps, giving developers broader distribution within Snapchat and letting them boost web traffic outside the app, per press materials shared with Mobile Marketer.
FabFitFun, Vice, Buzzfeed's mobile website and Insider are launch partners for Creative Kit for Web. Product Hunt, a website that lets users share and discover new products, and Snap are hosting the first-ever Snap Kit hackathon to invite developers around the world to build with the new tools.
Creative Kit for Web lets brands add a "Share to Snapchat" button to a mobile or desktop website. Each of those shared Snaps will have a branded sticker or GIF, along with a link to help drive traffic to related content on a website. Desktop visitors to those sites will see a Snapcode that can be scanned with a smartphone camera while using Snapchat to share a web link with friends and followers. Users also can subscribe to publisher channels on Discover, the section for professionally produced content, from shared Snaps or shared articles from a publisher's website.

Insight:

Snap's Creative Kit for Web is another sign that the company is extending support for developers who work on behalf of brands, ad agencies and publishers after last year's launch of Snap Kit. The software development kit included a collection of developer tools for third parties to integrate their apps more closely with Snapchat. The company in April hosted its first partner summit to reveal updates to Snap Kit, including a feature that let third parties more seamlessly integrate Snapchat Stories into their apps.

More than 450 apps are now integrated with Snap Kit, letting them interact with more than 100 million users, according to the company blog post. The integrations with third-party apps make Snapchat more central to the user experience while giving advertisers a change to reach a broader audience as people share viral content in messages and Stories.

As with Snap Kit, the company developed Creative Kit for Web to protect user privacy by not sharing personal information of friend lists with third-party developers. That limitation should help Snap to avoid data-sharing scandals like the Cambridge Analytica incident that made Facebook a target for harsh public scrutiny and government fines.

The introduction of Creative Kit for Web comes just days after Snap's Q3 earnings report, when the company said its revenue rose 50% from a year earlier on continued user growth and the release of more software tools to entice advertisers. Snapchat tallied 7 million additional daily active users to end its third straight quarter of growth at 210 million.