ORCL Oracle Corp

By Mike Shields 

Slowly but surely, Snap Inc. is starting to look a lot more like its competitors -- at least when it comes to targeting people with ads using sophisticated data.

The company has signed a deal with Oracle Data Cloud, previously known as Datalogix, that will help marketers use data from offline purchases, such as supermarket loyalty cards, to target consumers with potentially more relevant ads on the increasingly popular Snapchat mobile messaging app. The partnership will also help these marketers measure whether Snapchat ad campaigns result in real-world sales.

This is the first time Snapchat has allowed for ad targeting using third party data. Google, Facebook and Twitter have long offered the same offline data-targeting options through their own Datalogix partnerships. Oracle acquired Datalogix in 2014.

This move follows Snapchat's rollout in September of Snap Audience Match, which lets marketers use their own existing lists of email addresses and mobile device IDs for ad targeting purposes.

After being accused of moving slowly to incorporate advertising technology and targeting options, Snapchat has raced quickly over the past few years to build up its digital advertising infrastructure, particularly ahead of its parent company's planned initial public offering.

The social messaging app has partnered with more than a dozen ad measurement companies, for example. And last fall, Snapchat began enabling advertisers to buy ads in a more automated fashion via an API, or application programming interface.

These moves come on the heels of Snap founder and Chief Executive Evan Spiegel's now-famous promise two years ago to not be "creepy" when it comes to using lots of data to re-target users repeatedly.

But Jeremy Sigel, global director of partnerships and emerging media at the WPP-owned digital ad agency Essence, said that "this kind of data targeting is absolutely the price of doing business in digital."

"They are playing catch up, to Facebook in particular," he added.

Ad targeting on the web can become creepy, Mr. Sigel argued when advertisers go too far and "follow people around the web" with ads promoting items people have just been shopping for online. That tactic can be "lazy," he said. "There is a fine line."

Write to Mike Shields at mike.shields@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 19, 2017 06:14 ET (11:14 GMT)

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