Indosat Ooredoo partners with Snap to accelerate AR adoption in Indonesia

Indosat Ooredoo has expanded its partnership with Snap to accelerate the adoption of augmented reality (AR) in Indonesia. Over the next year, Indosat Ooredoo and Snap will launch several programmes to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds with AR and bring communities and businesses closer together, a press release said. Some of these programmes include the launch of an AR Creator Fund, which is said to open the door to funding opportunities for Indonesian creatives working with AR. This programme will consist of webinars, competitions, and potential job opportunities for participants. In addition, Snap plans to launch a new AR Lens each week for Indosat Ooredoo subscribers, while Indosat Ooredoo will provide subscribers data offers for new Snapchat users on its mobile plans.

As part of this partnership, Indosat Ooredoo has also been appointed as an authorised sales representative for Snap to manage advertising opportunities for the Snapchat platform in Indonesia. Through this, Indosat Ooredoo and Snap aim to drive innovation within the field of AR while empowering creativity and engagement amongst IM3 Ooredoo users, Snapchat users, and brands.

The expanded partnership comes as Indosat Ooredoo recognises that consumers are turning to digital behaviors across every aspect of their lives, including communication, commerce, entertainment, and learning. Coupled with digital transformation being a key focus for most businesses, Indosat Ooredoo said it will support brands to leverage AR as a medium of marketing and promotion for their products.

Meanwhile, Millennials and Gen Z, which Indosat Ooredoo and Snap term as "the Snapchat generation", are also becoming more mobile native, and they prefer to use technology for as many tasks as possible. According to the two companies, these consumers are more than twice as likely as people who don't use Snapchat to communicate with pictures over words. "They use augmented reality every day, spending on average more than 250 million minutes engaging with AR Lenses to express themselves and explore the world around them," the release added.

Vikram Sinha, director and chief operating officer of Indosat Ooredoo, said the collaboration will empower Indonesian developers and designers' creativity and help brands to harness the potential of AR to engage customers and transform industries. "We believe that an exciting digital future lies ahead, and Indosat Ooredoo is committed to empowering young people to compete on the world stage by collaborating with Snap to build a thriving augmented reality ecosystem in Indonesia. We are pleased to introduce iAds to our enterprise customers, positioned as an innovative digital marketing channel to help create awareness and generate sales leads for their brand," Sinha added. 

Nana Murugesan, managing director, international markets at Snap, added: "AR allows our community to discover and experience the world around them in new and immersive ways. With this increasing engagement, we are also focusing on our growing community of lens creators as well as extending the capabilities of our AR platform." Murugesan also said it Snap will continue to invest in its desktop application, Lens Studio, to create AR experiences. With Lens Studio, Snap said it is making the AR creation process easier while simultaneously providing "more sophisticated tools" in order to unlock the creativity of the Indonesian community and brands.

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