Snapchat Will Be Rolling Out a New “On-Demand” Geofilter
Anyone can now make Snapchat a more official part of their special events.
The company is rolling out a new “on-demand” geofilter that allows people and businesses to pay for custom filters, which will temporarily appear within the app. Though Snapchat has offered sponsored geofilters for some time, on-demand filters will cover much smaller geographic areas and will cost significantly less, with prices ranging from $5 to several thousand dollars. (You can use the company’s new online tool to experiment with prices and locations.)Geofilters are the in-app illustrations — typically tied to specific physical locations — that you can overlay onto your snaps. While a large number of Snapchat’s geofilters have always been user-generated, the company’s guidelines prevented businesses from creating filters until now. The new filters also allow people to create specialized filters for private events like birthday parties or weddings, which wouldn’t have worked within the previous guidelines.
The new on-demand filters let people pay for temporary placement within the app. Once you’ve designed your filter (Snapchat offers some templates), you’ll map out the specific area you want the filter to appear in, and for how long.
Buyers have some flexibility in arranging the details, though the on-demand filters aren’t nearly as far-reaching as the app’s sponsored ones, which can sometimes cover the entire country. The on-demand geofilters can cover anywhere from 20,000 square feet (part of a city block) to 5,000,000 square feet (several city blocks) and can last for an hour or a month. The price will depend on both of those factors.
The on-demand filters are available now to users in the U.S., UK and Canada, and the company says it will roll the feature out to more locations soon. As with other user-generated geofilters, the new paid filters will require Snapchat’s approval before they are pushed into the app. The company estimates that approval process should take about one business day.