Meet the Snap exec leading product strategy, driving monetization, and debunking myths on augmented reality

Carolina Arguelles, Snap’s
head of AR Monetization and Product Strategy
Snapchat

• Carolina Arguelles is Snap’s head of augmented reality
  (AR) Monetization and Product Strategy.
• Arguelles told Business Insider that AR education, as
  well as tackling misperceptions about the space, are a core
  part of her role.
• Another focus is how to make AR into something that’s
  accessible to more brands for more reasons.
• She also said that she believes Snap is in a good
  position because it was an early adopter in the space.

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Snapchat
has carved a name for itself as an augmented reality
pioneer. 

But while most people are familiar with its barfing rainbows and
dancing hot dogs, not much is known about the people working
behind-the-scenes to help pull those fun filters and lenses off.

As Snap’s head of AR Monetization and Product
Strategy, Carolina Arguelles works across the company’s
product and engineering teams to bring new AR capabilities and
buying methods to the market for advertisers. 

The former Nielsen manager spends a lot of time thinking about
how to make AR accessible to all brands, both big and small,
giving them the measurement tools they need, and battling
misperceptions about the nascent space.

Business Insider caught up with Arguelles to chat about all
things AR. Here’s a lightly edited version of the conversation.

Tanya Dua: What has been a priority for you in
terms of Snapchat’s AR filters and lenses?

Carolina Arguelles: One of our key areas of
focus is education. Just trying to make people understand what it
means to be in the camera. To advertise in the camera, how it is
accessible, how it’s not something that you should be super
scared of — which, especially with a new audience is something
that’s just core to anything that we can try to build off of.

Dua: And you’ve been hosting events as well. Two
years ago the perception was that Snap wasn’t really talking to
people much, and that’s completely changed now. What is the
strategic aim behind all of this? Are you trying to get more
advertisers on board? What’s the longer term play?

Arguelles: With AR, we’re not just trying to
sell to people, we’re really trying to educate people, because we
find it opportunistic for them. So that’s one goal, we need a
platform to help educate. And by being very quiet, it was hard
for us to do that. And then the second one, of course, is to try
to mobilize more traction as we’re launching these new features,
like shoppable AR.

Dua: How did you fall into leading revenue
product strategy for AR?

Arguelles: When I started at Snap, I was
actually on our measurement team. I was previously at Nielsen for
a long time, that really helped the transition into that. I was
running all measurement for every kind of vertical, except for
entertainment. And then I also started leading thought leadership
and evaluation of all of our ads. That’s how I really fell into
AR. My job was figuring out how does AR really drive measurement
results for advertisers, what works better than others, what are
creative best practices. I was really passionate about that, I
got close to the team, and then that’s when they invited me to
kind of come over and lead the AR product strategy on that
side. 

Dua: Tell me more about your job. What does
leading AR product strategy entail?

Arguelles: So, my main job is to bookend the
product development process. I’m trying to understand industry
trends: Where is the industry going, not just in tech, but
actually just where is society going? How are social economic
issues effecting how people are living their lives? And what are
advertisers saying about what they need? That helps me understand
where our priority should be, from a product development
standpoint.

Then, I work with Peter Sellis [Snap’s director of revenue
product] and his amazing team on developing the right technical
features. It’s their main job to actually build the features.
What I do is help synthesize what the market is saying about what
we should be building, based on what they want and what’s going
to really drive impact for them.

The next phase is helping them tweak, making sure the products
that they’re building have the features that advertisers actually
really want. The last phase is around positioning storytelling
and packaging from a market standpoint.

So that’s kind of the other side, which is: How do we go to
market? How do we educate people about something that they don’t
even understand? That when you say AR, they’re like, “What?
Augmented reality. Oh, that, is that the headset?” It’s a really
interesting and difficult, but exciting job on that side, of how
do you educate, how do you bring things to a market.

Dua: What about pricing? Do you decide that
as well?

Arguelles: Yes, I help direct strategy
for entire pricing teams. There’s pricing experts, and they do
the analysis around how we price things. What I do is I say,
“Hey, this is what we’re launching. Based on my analysis, this is
what I’m recommending for pricing. Please look at this and give
us your recommendation.” That’s really how it works. I basically
inform the pricing team on what they need to prioritize and how
they need to look at some analyses to figure out how we price
things.

Dua: Have you also been focused on bringing down
the cost of lenses and filters? They were exorbitant when they
first started.

Arguelles: Yeah, that’s been a key focus
area of mine specifically, but also other people. We can’t just
have this $500,000 option for a single-day buy. That was a part
of the reason for launching audience lenses. The reason why it’s
priced that way is because you’re reaching that many people. It’s
not arbitrary. It’s actually based on impressions and reach. If
we don’t have an alternative that’s lower reach, then how are we
ever gonna sell this? 

But we were still challenged because if we’re the only ones
producing, we can only take on so many lenses in so much time.
First we said if you spend up to this amount, we’ll build for you
for free. Then we realized that at the $300,000 level, you’re
still not going to have a mid-market brand. That’s their budget
for two quarters.

That’s what was so amazing about the push of Lens Studio out to
the public. Lens Studio democratizing that access to AR and AR
development is such a big part of how we can scale to, not just
the bigger advertisers, but the mid-market brands and
potentially, eventually, small businesses, which I think is
exciting.

Dua: So small businesses are a huge focus
for Snap, even in AR?

Arguelles: Definitely. I think one of our
focus areas is how do we continuously make AR something that’s
accessible to more brands and for more reasons. For the medium
mid-market, how do we make this tool something that’s achievable
to them? I think that’s just starting, these brands actually
starting to dabble and be experimental with the tools, which is
why I think AR is really set to take off over the next year,
especially.

Dua: How big of a priority has measurement
been for Snap’s AR products? How do you prove to marketers that a
barfing rainbow lens does not only drive engagement but ROI?

Arguelles: We have tried to make sure that we
had parity on measurement for lenses the same way we had for Snap
ads. It was making sure that Datalogics and Nielsen Catalina and
in-app polling and every single measurement solution was
available for lenses, and what’s most recent is that we just
announced pixel attribution and app-install attribution for
lenses as well. For us, that was a huge priority with working
cross-functionally to make sure that we have that.

Dua: What are some of your biggest
challenges, both in your job internally and plus with clients?

Arguelles: One core challenge, I continue to
say, is education. I don’t know how many meetings there are when
we’re starting again on 101, because there’s a fresh person in
the room, or there’s maybe an older person or more senior and
hasn’t much experience with Snapchat. But there’s starting to be
more people getting into it, and it helps that the industry is
starting to talk about it. That helps, actually. We don’t see it
as super competitive. We actually think building an ecosystem
around AR is important.

Dua: So you’re saying that you welcome
competition?

Arguelles: I think we welcome, whether it’s
Amazon or Apple or any platform that’s talking about AR. In a
way, a rising tide lifts all boats. I think that is true for AR a
little bit is it helps us with people becoming more familiar,
which is what we’re talking about.

Dua: And do people still have misperceptions
about AR and Snap in general?

Arguelles: Yes, this idea that you can only buy
one day, or it’ll cost a million dollars. That is something
that’s not true. That’s an important misperception to shake,
pricing misperception. The other is that AR is upper funnel.
Snapchat AR is not just upper funnel. We actually measured all
these very upper funnel-flighted campaigns, these big national
buys, and even those drove really strong sales results. The fact
that this unit can drive sales is really important to understand.
Those are the two big misperceptions that I think we’re trying to
battle.

Dua: On a broader company level, do you believe
that AR is Snapchat’s core key differentiator? It’s the area Snap
wants to own? 

Arguelles: I do believe that AR is one of our
key benefits. I do think that’s there’s actually something else
around just how you use our platform and our platform for
communication, not just social. There’s no question that because
we open straight to the camera, because we focus on our user
experience, that AR is one of our unique aspects, not just for
our users but for our advertisers as well. Because we invested in
AR 2 and a half years ago, it puts us in a good position today.

We know what happens. We understand what our users like and how
they respond. We understand what works for advertisers and what
doesn’t work. We have 2 and a half years and thousands of
campaigns. That puts us in a position where we’re not just
launching and experimenting, we’re actually already optimizing
and tweaking. That  position in the marketplace really sets
us up now that the industry is starting to catch up to it.

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