“Where we’re at continues to be a very exciting juncture,” said Snap’s EMEA President Ronan Harris in an exclusive interview with Campaign Middle East.
Talking about what Augmented Reality (AR) means for the social media platform, Harris was in a buoyant mood, despite the backdrop of a turbulent economic climate.
“I really do believe that augmented reality is on the verge of transforming a lot of our online experiences as well as our off-line and real-world experience”.
Snap has just launched a new AR enterprise suite to help companies create immersive experiences for their customers. “That’s what they’re expecting now. They want to have that rich, deep immersive experience because it’s what they’re used to doing every day with their family and friends”.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel spoke last year about the turbulent economic climate and how his company should face the consequences of lower revenue growth as it adapts to the market environment.
For Harris, AR will be the silver bullet to help deal with these challenges. “These new paradigm shifts, in my experience, tend to kind of ignore what’s going on in the macro economy. Because what we’re doing is we’re baking a new pie, and we’re seeing that reflected in the conversations we’re having with our client base and with the new clients coming onto the platform”.
Harris is a veteran in the technology sector and has seen a number of shifts in this industry. “My first few years in the industry were going around telling everybody that the Internet’s coming, they need to get ready for the Internet and figure out what Internet advertising looked like.
“Then we went through the mobile shift and then we went through the shift from text advertising and banner advertising to video advertising. Now we’re going through a shift where it’s moving to much more immersive technologies. And I think that’s what’s growing the community on our platform”.
Based in London, the Snap EMEA President was in the region where he met teams in Dubai and Riyadh. “In Saudi Arabia, we’ve got such tremendous penetration. Our platform is the go-to platform for the entire population. We’ve got over 90 per cent, for example, of 13 to 34 year olds.
“We’re working very hard to make sure that we can scale our offerings and service the demand that’s coming through. It’s really exciting”.
Snap will host an annual summit on 19th April gathering partners and creators online. Now in its fifth year, the annual Snap Partner Summit will unveil a wide array of new products, tools, services and partnerships.
Attendees can take part in product demonstrations and immersive AR experiences that bring Snap’s technology to life. The keynote will be livestreamed at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time at snappartnersummit.com.
