Snapchat wants to get serious about advertising – and it’s looking for some much needed help. The company wants to build ad technology to automate its ad sales, and as part of the effort, Snapchat is looking at possible ad tech acquisitions to help bolster its in-house team, according to multiple sources.

Snapchat has been in contact with multiple ad tech startups over the past six months, these sources say, including Beeswax, a startup that helps advertisers bid to target particular users, and Metamarkets, an analytics firm focused on programmatic buying.

Snapchat declined to comment, as did Beeswax and Metamarkets.

The acquisition effort is tied to the company’s plans to build out a more mature ad offering to coincide with all of the content it’s collecting from both users and publishers. Included in Snapchat’s blueprint is a plan to build an application programming interface that would allow Snapchat to automate how it sells ad campaigns, a similar technology already offered by rivals like Facebook and Twitter. These API plans are in their infancy, according to sources. Digiday first reported on Snapchat’s API ambitions last week.

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