Snap prepares to sell its soul as it attempts to turn a profit

Millenials, be careful what you snap, because Snapchat is about to offer advertisers more information on your whereabouts.

Snap Inc is set to roll out a new tool for advertisers called “Snap to Store.” This tool collects info and provides data to show advertisers which campaigns were successful. The metric used to measure this will be how many more people snap from those locations after an ad is used on Snap.

For example, say you go into a store like The Gap, and use a Gap-sponsored geofilter over your snap. Snap’s advertisers would be able to track who saw your Gap snap, and how many of them subsequently visited the store themselves.

According to an independent report commissioned by Snapchat, 80-percent of users take Snaps in restaurants. A further 66-percent use the app in shopping malls, and 50-percent at the gym. Now Snap will take information on all of these places, and if any of them have advertised with Snap in the past, they will take this as indication that their ad worked on you.

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The feature was in beta for a while, and you might have noticed signs like the sponsored geofilter for Wendy’s. According to Snap, this drove 42,000 people to Wendy’s in a week.

I don’t blame Snap for hitching its wagon to a big business like Wendy’s. It might be the only way the company ever turns a profit. But I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea that more of my information is being given to advertisers, even if it is just a statistic.