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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
Snapchat has long resisted the kind of hyper-targeted ad tracking that makes Google and Facebook billions every year.
But now the Venice, California company will show ads based on what its users buy in the real world, thanks to a partnership with Oracle Data Cloud announced on Thursday. The move comes as Snap prepares a public offering that could value its business at $25 billion.
Oracle's treasure trove of data will let advertisers serve ads in Snapchat based on offline purchases and loyalty reward programs. Snapchat already lets advertisers target its 150 million daily users based on their behavior in the app, but this is the first time that it's used a third party to target ads.
Early advertiser partners in the program are Honda, Kia, The Honest Company, and STX Entertainment, which will target Snapchat users who buy tickets from movie theaters. Advertisers will be able to target ads based on 100 shopping categories, like "cosmetics" and "consumer tech," but not target people based on the specific products they buy, a Snap spokesperson told Business Insider.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has been a sharp critic of ad targeting techniques used by competitors like Facebook, even as his company has aggressively expanded its ad offerings through numerous ad measurement partnerships and an automated ad sales system.
"We're going to stay away from building really extensive profiles on people because that's just bad and doesn't feel very good," Spiegel told AdWeek in 2015.