Snap Inc. Integrates Perfect Corp. AR Digital Try-On Technology to Create Snapchat Catalog Shopping Lens

Situation: Bringing Augmented Reality to Shopping Lenses and Beauty Consumers on Snapchat

Snap Inc. is a global camera company, founded in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains technological products and services, namely Snapchat, Spectacles, Pixy, and Bitmoji. The company’s mission is to contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

Snap captured the imagination of the world with its reinvention of the camera. As part of its innovative spirit, it brings artificial intelligence (AI)-driven augmented reality (AR) to Snapchat’s 347 million daily active users. The company saw bringing AR try-on to beauty products as a natural fit.

“We want to provide our community with really immersive and useful AR experiences, because self-expression is a huge part of our platform,” says Skye Featherstone, Group Product Marketing Manager—Augmented Reality, at Snap Inc. “Bringing AR-powered try-on capabilities for the beauty landscape lets us deliver on both our community's desire to express themselves and have personalized shopping experiences—differentiated and unique shopping experiences that are highly memorable and extremely personal.”

Native Integration. Snap has integrated Perfect Corp. AR technology directly into its Snapchat Shopping Lens.

Solution: Perfect Corp. Hyper-Realistic Virtual Try-On Technology for Beauty

Snap chose to work with Perfect Corp., which combines powerful AI with its industry-leading AR to provide stunningly lifelike AR try-on experiences. Snap Inc. has natively integrated Perfect Corp.’s AR try-on technology into Snapchat’s Catalog Shopping Lenses. This  enables virtual try-on for makeup product shades and textures to Snapchat's vast community of users.

Integrating Perfect Corp.’s technology with Snapchat’s Catalog Shopping Lenses means that users can  dive into immersive digital try-on experiences to see exactly how lip, eye, foundation, and other beauty products look on their own face.

Utilizing the digital AR try-on capability on Snapchat is seamless for the many beauty companies already using Perfect Corp. technology. Beauty companies can simply copy their AR makeup SKUs onto the Snapchat Catalog Shopping Lens console.

The result is a complete try and buy experience, featuring pricing, availability, and purchasing methods.

“With over 250 million Snapchatters engaging with AR every day, we’re excited knowing our partnership with Perfect Corp. can create an easier process for beauty brands to leverage their existing AR content, and build Catalog Shopping Lenses within Snapchat to help reach the next generation of beauty shoppers,” says Carolina Arguelles Navas, Snap’s Global Product Marketing Lead in Augmented Reality.

Choosing Perfect Corp. was an easy decision for Snap.

“Perfect Corp. is a fantastic partner, and they are obviously thought leaders and technology leaders in the beauty landscape,” Featherstone says. “We work together to meet the needs of our Snapchat community, business partners, and merchants. Perfect Corp. provides the leading technology solution for AR asset creation and AR asset management. Our partnership enables Snapchat advertisers and merchants to leverage their existing relationship with Perfect Corp. and the technology of AR asset development to drive their business results through organic distribution and paid media.”

The Power of AR.  Snapchat Catalog Shopping Lens incorporates Perfect Corp. AR virtual try-on technology to enable Snapchatters to see exactly how Beauty products will look when applied.

Benefits of Bringing Beauty AR Try-On to Snapchat Shopping Lenses

Snap has enjoyed several benefits since deploying its Perfect Corp. AI+AR-powered digital try-on technology, including:

• Giving consumers highly personalized shopping experiences and increasing purchasing confidence
• Based on data from a recent beta test, AR Catalog Shopping Lenses, including those powered by Perfect Corp. AR technology, resulted in 2.4x higher purchase intent and 14% sales lift compared to video spend
• Scalability to support millions of AR try-ons

AR Try-On Gives Consumers Highly Personalized Experiences and Increases Purchasing Confidence

The precise Perfect Corp. AR try-on technology that Snap has integrated into its Snapchat Catalog Shopping Lenses gives consumers a highly personalized product experience, which provides them with the confidence to buy.

“Personalization is really central to the user experience,” Featherstone says. “With theprecision augmented reality of our digital try-on, the consumer is at the very center of the experience. Instead of looking at how a product looks on a professional model, they are seeing exactly how it looks on them. They get to see this in real-time, live. That personalization is important to the shopper experience for beauty and skincare.”

Snap also values how seamlessly the AR try-on technology works across all skin types, shades, and colors.

“The AR technology is powerful from a diversity standpoint,” says Dominique Harvey, Product Marketing Manager at Snap Inc. “Our Snapchat community includes people from around the world. They can each see exactly how a red lipstick, or any other beauty product will look on their own face, across all skin tones, across all geographies.”

Featherstone agrees: “This is a very inclusive technology. Our AR try-on allows all Snapchatters to have a very personal, bespoke experience in seeing exactly how beauty products look on their very own self.”

A Recent AR Beta Test Resulted in 2.4x Higher Purchase Intent and 14% Sales Lift Compared to Video Ad Spend

In a recent beta test group for Snapchat's Catalog Shopping Lenses, including those powered by Perfect Corp. AR technology, aggregating data from all participants showed a 2.4x higher purchase intent, with a 14% sales lift, compared to video spend.

“During the beta testing, Snapchat users tried on products more than 250 million times,” Featherstone says. “We were definitely encouraged by the enthusiasm of user adoption, the true scale,  and the performance of the experience. Most importantly we could see how enjoyable and entertaining digital try-on is for our Snapchat community.”

Scalability: Millions of AR Try-Ons at Less Than a Cent Per Try-On

With 347 million active daily users, Snap requires immense scalability for its Snapchat Catalog Shopping Lenses. It’s found that scalability through working with Perfect Corp.

“Our Perfect Corp. partnership helps us deliver on our goal of making it easy and scalable to create AR experiences for our millions of Snapchatters,” Featherstone says. “We’re able to offer large-scale catalog-based lenses through seamlessly bringing in AR assets from Perfect Corp. partners. This means Beauty brands can leverage their existing AR assets, making it fast and simple to provide AR at scale and distribute it to our highly engaged Snapchat community.”

Beauty brands find they can offer AR try-on experiences to their consumers for less than a cent.

“We see that cost per try-on as measured by actually rendering the AR experience on the Snapchatter is less than a cent in many cases, which we’ve seen from a lot of brand campaigns and ad campaigns with AR over the past many months,” Featherstone says. “This is an impressive stat that we're really excited about.”

Such impressive results are great news for Beauty brands, as well as Snapchatters, who are diving into digital try-on experiences.

“All of this demonstrates that our Snapchat community is hungry for more beauty AR experiences,” Featherstone says. “Working with Perfect Corp., we have a scalable way to reach our community and provide them with the personalized AR shopping experience that they love and increasingly demand.”

Virtual Try-On. Snapchat users have embraced the highly personal and immersive shopping experiences of virtual try-on.

Perfect Corp.: The Leading AR Technology Partner in Beauty

The enthusiasm with which Snapchat Catalog Shopping Lenses have been embraced by the Snapchat community has underscored the benefits of working with a great technology company.

“As we looked at technology and platform partners, we wanted to make sure that we were partnering with the best in the business,” Featherstone says. “Perfect Corp is a great and leading technology house. They are category experts within the Beauty landscape, so it was a natural fit for us to go ahead and develop a deeper partnership for AR integration.”

Both companies are passionate about delivering exceptional experiences for their users.

“When it comes to how we think about creating exceptional user experiences, and how we work with Perfect Corp., it's a delight to engage with a group of really passionate category experts,” Featherstone says. “The Perfect Corp. team are leading technologists who understand how to bring things to life at scale.”

To hear more about Snap Inc.’s partnership with Perfect Corp., watch the video below.

About Perfect Corp

Perfect Corp. is the leading SaaS AI and AR beauty and fashion tech solutions provider, dedicated to transforming shopping experiences through empowering brands to embrace the digital-first world.

By partnering with the largest names in the industry, Perfect Corp.’s suite of enterprise solutions delivers synergistic, technology-driven experiences that facilitate sustainable, ultra-personalized, and engaging shopping journeys, as well as equipping brands with next generation of consumer goods.

Perfect Corp. offers a complementary suite of mobile apps, including YouCam Makeup and YouCam Perfect, to provide a consumer platform to virtually try-on new products, perform skin diagnoses, edit photos, and share experiences with the YouCam Community.

To learn more, please visit PerfectCorp.com