Snap opens up its Marketing API to allcomers

Snapchat has opened its Marketing API to any developer who’d like to access the platform. Launched in October 2016, the Marketing API has previously only been available to a handful of established technology companies in the Snapchat Partners program, who have used it to develop tools that satisfy the needs of the world’s largest advertisers. As of today, it is open for any agency, brand, or tech partner to integrate, no matter the size, scope, or scale of the software being built.

The Marketing API enables developers, agencies and advertisers to easily layer on proprietary data sets to enhance targeting, creative, and measurement. eCommerce retailers can programmatically optimize for hot products as inventory levels change, stopping ads for a product if inventory gets low and restarting them when inventory is replenished.

They can also use real-time stats pipelines to inform cross-channel marketing decisions; and ingest ad metadata and performance metrics into their own data warehouse for analysis and decision making.

“We’ve been listening closely to third-party developers as we transition Snapchat ad products onto our self-serve platform,” said Snap director of revenue programs, James Borow. “Today we’re opening up our Marketing API to give every developer tools to build the Snapchat ad solutions that perform best for them and their customers.”

The Snapchat app currently has 187m daily active users, including more than 60m in Europe. Not all of them are happily following the redesign to the app that rolled out last week. So far, more than 750,000 users have signed an online petition calling on Snap to remove the update and revert to the previous version.