Snap is trying to make it easier for smaller businesses to advertise on its platform.
Snap and Shopify, the e-commerce company that makes tools for small businesses to sell goods online, announced Monday a new integration to allow Shopify merchants to buy and manage Snapchat Story ad campaigns directly on Shopify's platform.
Shopify already works directly with Facebook and Google, meaning Snap serves as the platform's third partner. Though Shopify already allowed its merchants to buy carousel ads on Facebook, it also said Monday it is adding dynamic ads. Shopify says it works with more than 800,000 merchants on its platform.
Snap is trying to lure more advertisers and expand how those advertisers can reach consumers. Though brands and agencies can already use Snapchat Ads Manager (which allows marketers to build audiences, create ads and campaigns and monitor performance), this move lets hundreds of thousands of small merchants who want a quick and easy ad campaign do so from Shopify.
It opens Snap's door, for example, for a small business that may not have the budget for an agency or the marketing know-how to do more sophisticated campaigns. This integration will allow those kinds of companies to build and manage Snapchat Story ad campaigns directly through an app in Shopify's self-serve buying platform.
Shopify says more than half its merchants are "solo-preneurs" who find marketing challenging. Last year, the company launched marketing in Shopify to make the ad campaign process easier, starting with native ad-buying for things like Facebook carousel ads and Google Smart Shopping campaigns. The campaigns are conducted within the Shopify platform, where merchants manage their stores, with things like payments, store analytics, sales channels and inventory management.
Snap this month has made a number of moves to throw some momentum into its advertising business. In early April, the company made several announcements including an ad-supported gaming platform and the launch of a Snap Audience Network, which will sell ads that appear in apps other than Snapchat.
Last week, Snap announced it has hired its first-ever chief marketing officer. And later this quarter, it plans to roll out "Snap Select," a new way for advertisers to buy and reserve commercials, which in this case are nonskip, six-second video ads, in its "most premium" shows in Snapchat Discover.
