Snapchat’s updated policies hint at bigger search, ad ambitions

On the same day Snapchat introduced an updated chat service, the social network updated its terms of service and privacy policy in ways that suggest how its product and business are evolving and more changes it may have in store.

Among the changes, Snapchat has introduced new language that mentions its service potentially containing third-party search results, updated the types of information that it collects from people who use its app or visit its site and tweaked how it refers to the products people can purchase through Snapchat. A Snapchat spokesperson declined to comment on the changes.

Companies change their terms of service and privacy policies fairly regularly, and typically, those changes are kinda boring. Usually they smooth out some language or make the documents more explicit about things that companies already do. But sometimes the changes also pave a path for things a company doesn’t yet do but plans to eventually do. The changes Snapchat has made to its terms of service and privacy policy appear to be a mix of the three. Below is a breakdown of the more eye-catching changes.

To identify the changes, Marketing Land used the the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to pull up the most recent versions of Snapchat’s terms of service and privacy policies before Tuesday’s update. Each of those documents was last updated on October 28, 2015. Then we used DiffChecker to compare the old and new versions in order to identify the changes.

Third-party search results

Snapchat’s search product is super-bare-bones. But maybe not for long. Snapchat’s updated privacy policy says its service may contain “third-party links and search results.” Third-party links aren’t anything new, but third-party search results would be. If only the Snapchat spokesperson would say what that’s referring to. A deal with Google or Bing?

Updates about the info it collects

Filter views: Snapchat collects information about the filters people see that can be applied to the photos or videos posted to the app. The new privacy policy doesn’t say whether that means the filters people see when deciding whether to apply a filter to their own posts or the ones they see applied to others’ posts. It likely means both. Snapchat is already able to measure the number of impressions a sponsored lens campaign receives, so this may not be a new practice. Maybe this new language makes more clear to anyone who cares to read through the legalese that Snapchat does that. And maybe Snapchat wanted to be more clear about it because it plans to use that information in new or expanded ways, such as by factoring in how many people were shown a sponsored lens but decided not to use it for their own snaps, in case Snapchat wants to change how it charges for those ads.

Search queries submitted: Snapchat keeps track of the searches people conduct in its app. Again, Snapchat was probably doing this before but for some reason didn’t feel like it needed to be explicit about it until now. Why would that be? Snapchat’s search product is pretty basic; it only appears when looking for accounts to follow. Maybe Snapchat plans to start using that information more, such as by improving its results for those searches. Or maybe Snapchat is planning to ramp up its search product, perhaps by working with other companies.

Device advertising identifiers: Snapchat’s privacy policy previously mentioned that Snapchat collected the unique identifiers that are attached to individual devices, like a specific iPhone or Android tablet. But Apple and Google don’t like apps using those identifiers for advertising purposes, such as to track people’s behavior in order to target them with ads. So now, Snapchat is also mentioning the advertising-specific identifiers that Apple and Google provide, which are supposed to give people more control over their privacy. Why would Snapchat want to collect those ad-specific identifiers? Potentially for plenty of reasons. Snapchat already has people’s registered account information to target and measure the ads served in its app, but maybe the company that’s in the process of beefing up its ad tech and just hired the head of Facebook’s ad network wants to start targeting ads outside of its app or measuring its ads against things people do outside of its app. Being able to connect people’s Snapchat accounts to the devices they use would enable Snapchat to connect its ad business to that outside world, and doing so using the ad-specific identifiers instead of the unique device identifiers would make sure Snapchat is doing that without violating Apple’s or Google’s policies.

Pages visited after checking out Snapchat’s site: Snapchat had already said it tracks the pages someone checked out before visiting its site, but now it says it tracks the pages visited afterward. That’s not unreasonable for any site — and again, Snapchat may simply be spelling out now something it already did — but until recently Snapchat’s wasn’t much of a site. Prior to late February, Snapchat’s site was really only a place to read its company blog and policy documents or link to an app store to download its app. But last month, Snapchat put its Academy Award Live Story on its site for anyone to see, including people without a Snapchat account. If Snapchat wants to make its site more in line with its app — such as by posting Live Stories there more regularly including ad-supported ones or letting people check out ad-supported or commerce-enabled Discover channels — then it might also want to be able to track if people navigate from that content to an advertiser’s or publisher’s site in order to get credit for that traffic.

Not just any products, virtual products

Last year Snapchat started letting people buy lenses, or filters, that they could apply to the photos and videos they post in the app. It eventually killed that product, but not its ecommerce ambitions. In February, Snapchat board member and Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Joanna Coles indicated that publishers will be able to sell products through their Discover channels. Conceivably that would include physical products, as opposed to the virtual products Snapchat has already sold. So maybe this is just an example of Snapchat tightening the language in its legal documents. Or maybe Snapchat tweaked its terms to specify only virtual products in anticipation of adding a separate section to cover non-virtual products whenever it starts letting companies peddle them through its app.

New cookie policy

Cookies can be confusing. So Snapchat has created a new document dedicated to delving into what cookies and other trackers are and how Snapchat uses them. There’s nothing eye-opening for anyone deep in the digital advertising space, but any Snapchat users who, for whatever reason, may stumble upon these legal documents may be unaware of the ways Snapchat can track what they’re up to and how they can opt out of that tracking.

Only one way to terminate the terms

Prior to Tuesday, Snapchat’s terms said that you could terminate your agreement with the company over how you can use its app by simply deleting it from your phone. But Snapchat didn’t have a way to know that you deleted the app, so attempting to terminate the agreement that way wouldn’t necessarily work. Now, Snapchat is clearing things up: If you want to terminate the terms of service, you have to delete your account.

Terms tailor-made for the government

Snapchat has created an amendment to terms of service specifically aimed at people using Snapchat “on behalf of an entity of the US Government.” Snapchat’s new terms of service don’t detail or link to those amended terms, so it’s unclear what exactly they entail. Considering that Snapchat backed Apple in the hardware giant’s recent fight with the FBI over accessing the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone, this might seem Snapchat giving a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag to the government, but it might instead be standardizing its policy for dealing with requests from the government. Google and Facebook, for example, include similar amendments to the terms for their products.

Update: Since this article published, the headline has been changed to better highlight the search and advertising portion of Snapchat’s policy changes, as has the order of the article’s contents. None of the content from the original version of the article has been removed.