What you need to know in advertising today

It's no secret that Snapchat has been leaning into augmented reality in recent years, arming marketers with a suite of products that enable them to test the technology in their ads.

But it turns out, some brands have it better than others.

Select marketers, including Adidas, Anheuser-Busch and McDonald's are part of of an exclusive group that gets early access to Snapchat's latest proprietary AR tools and ad formats - before they become widely available.

They are part of what Snapchat is calling "AR Partnership Program," a pilot initiative where 10 of its partners get early access to new formats and buying methods in the form of alpha and beta tests, as well as visibility into Snapchat's AR product roadmap.

To read more about the exclusive program, click here.

In related news:

Snapchat figured out how to analyze people's selfies to score their emotions. Snap has patented a way to monitor precisely how people are feeling at events like gigs or speeches using facial recognition on Snapchat selfies, as well as by taking cues from messages, to score how happy, sad, or terrified people are feeling.

In other news:

Facebook Watch is expanding globally and giving publishers one stat to track how many people watch their videos week after week. It will now let international publishers earn money from their videos, starting with the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.

Amazon is preparing to roll out a new, free video streaming services for Fire TV users. The service, tentatively called FreeDive, would be available free to users of the Amazon Fire TV device.

If you have a Yahoo account your emails have probably been scanned to figure out what you buy - and they may have been read by employees of the company. Oath - the Verizon business that includes Yahoo and AOL - scans user emails for ad targeting, The Wall Street Journal reported.

'All three companies do the same thing:' Digital publishing mashup Maven cut $5 million and laid off 17 Say Media staffers to reach profitability. Say Media let go of 17 staffers as the company merges with Maven and HubSpace to create one digital publishing entity.