Snap Inc. has introduced a suite of AI-powered advertising capabilities, covering campaign setup, creative production, shopping recommendations, and creator partnerships, as the company looks to drive more advertiser spending to its platform.
The announcement came roughly six weeks after Snap reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.53 billion, a 12% year-over-year increase, with Adjusted EBITDA rising to $233 million from $108 million in the prior-year period.
Campaign Setup and Optimization
A new tool called Snap Smart Assistant allows advertisers to describe their goals and receive automated recommendations for campaign objectives, audience strategy, and optimization settings. The assistant guides campaign setup and surfaces health checks through an agent-like interface.
Snap is also opening its ads platform to third-party AI agents through a Model Context Protocol server, enabling advertisers and partners to connect Snapchat to external planning, creation, and optimization tools.
Conversational Commerce and Shopping
The company launched AI Sponsored Snaps, a format that enables brands to engage users through AI agents within Snapchat’s Chat feature, with Experian among its early alpha partners. Snap also revamped its Dynamic Product Ads with new recommendation models that synthesize user behavior, product affinity, and real-time intent signals.
Dynamic Product Ads revenue grew more than 30% year-over-year in Q1 2026, with adoption among small and medium-sized businesses more than doubling during the same period.
Creative Tools
New creative capabilities allow advertisers to convert a single product image into multiple vertical ad formats. Smart Upscale enhances assets for full-screen vertical display, Image-to-Video converts still images into short-form video, and Background Image Enhancement generates product-focused ad backgrounds.
Snap also introduced Sponsored AI Lenses, a generative AI ad format. GenAI Lenses generated nearly 38 billion impressions since Q4 2025, according to the company.
Creator Network
Snap announced Snap Creator Network, an AI-powered system for creator discovery and campaign activation. Advertisers describe creator criteria, including audience, tone, category, or campaign goals, and the system returns matched recommendations while managing outreach and activation. The product is scheduled to launch later this year.
“There’s a lot of conversation about AI transforming advertising, but the real opportunity is making advertising more useful,” said Ajit Mohan, Chief Business Officer at Snap Inc. “By building around the ways people already communicate, discover, shop, and create on Snapchat, we’re helping advertisers connect with our community in ways that feel more relevant, natural, and effective.”
Snap reported 956 million monthly active users in Q1 2026, up 5% year-over-year. A separate existing format, Sponsored Snaps, posted a 226% increase in per-impression click-through rates and a 59% rise in seven-day conversion volume during the quarter.
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
Snap Inc. has introduced a suite of AI-powered advertising capabilities, covering campaign setup, creative production, shopping recommendations, and creator partnerships, as the company looks to drive more advertiser spending to its platform.
The announcement came roughly six weeks after Snap reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.53 billion, a 12% year-over-year increase, with Adjusted EBITDA rising to $233 million from $108 million in the prior-year period.
Campaign Setup and Optimization
A new tool called Snap Smart Assistant allows advertisers to describe their goals and receive automated recommendations for campaign objectives, audience strategy, and optimization settings. The assistant guides campaign setup and surfaces health checks through an agent-like interface.
Snap is also opening its ads platform to third-party AI agents through a Model Context Protocol server, enabling advertisers and partners to connect Snapchat to external planning, creation, and optimization tools.
Conversational Commerce and Shopping
The company launched AI Sponsored Snaps, a format that enables brands to engage users through AI agents within Snapchat’s Chat feature, with Experian among its early alpha partners. Snap also revamped its Dynamic Product Ads with new recommendation models that synthesize user behavior, product affinity, and real-time intent signals.
Dynamic Product Ads revenue grew more than 30% year-over-year in Q1 2026, with adoption among small and medium-sized businesses more than doubling during the same period.
Creative Tools
New creative capabilities allow advertisers to convert a single product image into multiple vertical ad formats. Smart Upscale enhances assets for full-screen vertical display, Image-to-Video converts still images into short-form video, and Background Image Enhancement generates product-focused ad backgrounds.
Snap also introduced Sponsored AI Lenses, a generative AI ad format. GenAI Lenses generated nearly 38 billion impressions since Q4 2025, according to the company.
Creator Network
Snap announced Snap Creator Network, an AI-powered system for creator discovery and campaign activation. Advertisers describe creator criteria, including audience, tone, category, or campaign goals, and the system returns matched recommendations while managing outreach and activation. The product is scheduled to launch later this year.
“There’s a lot of conversation about AI transforming advertising, but the real opportunity is making advertising more useful,” said Ajit Mohan, Chief Business Officer at Snap Inc. “By building around the ways people already communicate, discover, shop, and create on Snapchat, we’re helping advertisers connect with our community in ways that feel more relevant, natural, and effective.”
Snap reported 956 million monthly active users in Q1 2026, up 5% year-over-year. A separate existing format, Sponsored Snaps, posted a 226% increase in per-impression click-through rates and a 59% rise in seven-day conversion volume during the quarter.
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