Saks, Yahoo Creative Studios Develop Interactive AR Selfie Filter for Instagram

Luxury retailer Saks teamed up with Yahoo Creative Studios on an interactive augmented reality selfie filter for Instagram. People visiting the Saks Instagram account can access the filter, which brings them to a Saks-inspired virtual holiday world with three different options. A glam filter with sparkle enhancements adorns users with accessories and invites them to a festive holiday party. A ski slope filter dresses them in goggles and a warm scarf. And a seaside resort filter gives them shades and a sun hat. All of the products in the AR experiences are included in the Saks Holiday Gift Guide and the In the Know By Yahoo Gift Guide. Saks said the concept was originally co-developed with Verizon Business and marks the next step in a longstanding relationship between Saks, Verizon Business and Yahoo. The retailer cited data from Drapers surveys, stating that more than one-half of millennials and Generation Z visit Instagram for fashion inspiration, and a similar number have clicked through social posts to make purchases. And Animoto found that three-quarters of millennials believe a brand’s social media presence influences their purchase decisions. Yahoo said there are more than 240 million people with Yahoo ConnectID user profiles in the U.S., accounting for 91% of the country’s internet population and 87% of Gen-Z and millennials. A promotional video—which also includes a shoppable holiday gift guide featuring items curated by Saks—is running in ads across Yahoo-owned properties, driving viewers to the AR holiday filter via a link atop the ITK Gift Guide. Product links and the promo video are featured across social platforms, and QR codes also bring people directly to the Instagram experience. Yahoo said ITK draws 20 million monthly readers and has more than 60 million social media followers, adding that when factoring in the Yahoo ecosystem as a whole, its videos are viewed over 1.2 billion times per month. Saks also incorporated native video and mobile moments video executions across the Yahoo ecosystem as part of the initiative, tapping into the 200 billion data signals Yahoo collects each day from its network of properties. Yahoo Creative Studios used machine learning to build a quantitative model that leveraged more than 2 million different user attributes to predict the purchase probability for each potential customer. And the campaign used precise targeting to focus on three categories derived from users’ Yahoo ConnectID profiles and focus on people with a history of shopping for luxury goods and clothing.