Transform Mobile Shopping With AR at Scale

Since the launch of catalog-powered Shopping Lenses only months ago, brands have seen promising results for their AR try-on experiences across multiple product areas such as apparel, accessories, home goods, and beauty.

We have seen early success with catalog-powered Shopping Lenses, which are designed to offer Snapchatters a way to seamlessly interact with, try on, and purchase multiple products in a single Lens.

Since January of last year, more than 250 million Snapchatters have engaged with AR shopping lenses more than 5 billion times1.

Catalogs are fundamental to commerce businesses, but they are also frequently an impersonal shopping experience. With Snap’s AR try-on technology and free-to-use Lens Web Builder, brands can make their products more personal by putting the shopper at the center of the experience. Personalization is built into AR try-on by design, and goal based bidding optimizations help ensure the right shopper sees your AR experience. 

When it comes to AR try-on, Snap is tackling three pain points for retailers around product accuracy, sizing, and lack of personalized experiences. Shopping Lenses allow for personalization at scale, and improved ROI throughout the funnel through three technological breakthroughs: accurate size and scale, purpose-built shopping UI tied to catalogs, and a robust advertising stack for product-level optimizations.

Recent campaigns have shown that catalog-powered Shopping Lenses can drive improved performance throughout the funnel. 

Leads to improvements in consideration and conversion 

Consumers need to know what they see in AR looks accurate and realistic to what will land at their doorstep. Snap’s Truesize technology leverages Lidar depth cameras on phones to place the AR asset on the face, body, or world with accurate size and scale.

Skeidar developed catalog-powered Shopping lenses for users to experience different types of outdoor garden furniture in AR and ultimately make a purchase directly from the AR experience. 

Their full-funnel multi-format approach utilized catalog–powered Shopping Lenses in the media mix to help Snapchatters gain confidence in their purchase decisions by being able to see how furniture looked in their space. As a result, this led to an increase in user intent, brand favorability, and return-on-ad-spend.

Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses are more efficient in driving Swipes for Retail and Beauty brands.

We have seen success in multiple markets for the Eyewear category.

With Snapchat's AR try-on Lens, Eyewa has further enhanced their customers' online experience by allowing them to try on their eyeglasses virtually before they buy. This time, on Snapchat.With Snapchat's AR try-on Lens, Eyewa has further enhanced their customers' online experience by allowing them to try on their eyeglasses virtually before they buy. This time, on Snapchat.

Powered by commerce catalogs, Catalog Powered Shopping Lens enables AR product visualization and try-on experiences that present multiple products from the same catalog in a single Lens making try-on experiences more fun, immersive and efficient.

"With Snapchat's AR shoppable lenses feature, eyewa was able to deliver an unparalleled experience to our audience whilst driving an 8X ROAS''


Ahmad Khatib, Performance Marketing Specialist

Specific to lower funnel goals such as conversions, Zenni leveraged catalog-powered Shopping Lenses on Snap with the goal of increasing return-on-ad-spend.

Snap’s True Size technology powers eyewear AR lenses to adapt to the user’s face and appear as if they are trying on eyewear in person. This ultimately led to a frictionless try-on process.

Leads to increased engagement and consumer confidence

80% of Shoppers feel more confident in their purchase as a result of using AR3.

Shoppers want to be able to shop various products seamlessly, in one session. A single lens can have up to 20 AR try-ons in it, giving shoppers the ability to try on different styles and products through the purpose built Lens Product Cards that dynamically update the Lens creative when items go out of stock or have a change in price.

American Eagle's catalog-powered shopping lens

American Eagle, retailer of jeans, t-shirts and activewear, found real success by including multiple different products in their Shopping Lens. They wanted to drive scale, efficiency, and performance improvements across their core customer segment. The shopping lens linked directly to American Eagle’s product catalog, which provided a scalable way to promote products. Throughout the campaign, the lens also reflected product availability and prices accurately so customers should accurately view items before making a purchase.

"By using the catalog-powered Shopping Lenses, our customers were able to engage with multiple American Eagle products from our men’s and women’s collections in a new and dynamic way that only Snap can create, driving great return for our businesses.''


Ashley Schapiro, VP of Marketing, Media, Performance & Engagement

Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses drive improvements across all key purchase metrics, from Purchase Rate and Cost Per Purchase to Return on Ad Spend.

Increased personalization through relevant AR experiences

Online shopping doesn’t feel very personal to shoppers today. A recent study4 indicated AR provided a more personalized shopping experience. Snapchatters are more likely than non-Snapchatters to feel that brands that use AR provide a more personalized experience.With both live AR try-on and AR Image try-on capabilities the shopper is the center of the experience. 

Even more, with dedicated optimizations based on product-level interactions, Snap’s goal based bidding leverages interaction data to provide the most relevant product SKU to shoppers who are likely to convert.

Live try-on capabilities power fast-loading, personalized experiences.

Ulta, global beauty retailer, has made Shopping Lenses a part of their always-on media mix by utilizing Goal Based Bidding and testing multiple-different beauty try-ons with new product releases throughout the year.

Cosnova, a cosmetics company in Germany, leveraged catalog-powered Shopping Lenses so they could scale and implement an AR experience that enabled them to promote their wide variety of lipsticks to Snapchatters in a personalized manner.

Using Lens Web Builder, Cosnova was able to quickly create an AR Lens experience for lipstick’s that Snapchatters could use to try on products. By attaching their product catalog to the lens experience, they immediately improved reach and personalization for each Snapchatter within the campaign.

Beauty templates within Lens Web Builder enabled Cosnova to improve the accuracy of the lipstick try-on experience for users, which led to amazing results in their campaign.

Ready to Get Started?

We have seen that consumers are already embracing Augmented Reality to make purchase decisions.

Prepare your business today and learn more about Snap’s Augmented Reality Solutions for retailers.

1 Snap Inc. internal data January 01 2021 - February 28 2022
2 Snap Inc. internal data May 20, 2021 - February 28, 2022
3 2022 Alter agents study commissioned by Snap Inc and Publicis Media
Base: Global Beauty Shoppers (n=805)
QA6: How much do you agree with the following statement about AR technology and shopping?
4 2022 Alter agents study commissioned by Snap Inc and Publicis Media
Base: FR Beauty Shoppers (n=216)
QA6: How Much do you agree with the following statements about AR technology and shopping?
5 Data from Snap Ads Manager as of December 17 - December 31, 2021