After having demonstrated a preview for Sponsored Snaps and Promoted Places in March, Snapchat has now said that it has provided a few more details regarding its new ad formats, which will allow ad partners to reach users when it matters most within the app.

For years, Snap's inbox has been a kind of holy area; no sponsored content was allowed in here. But with "My AI," it looks like the gates have opened for at least one party: Snap is now apparently ready to allow brands to send promotions directly to your chats.

[**]

As you can see from this example. wait, no you can't, because for reasons unknown, Snapchat hasn't offered an image of what Sponsored Snaps will resemble. Which makes it a bit of an unusual update, because as noted, Snap had already announced these updates in the pipeline last month.

So today is mostly a reaffirmation that those things are coming. Or something.

Whatever it is, Snap states that Sponsored Snaps are going to allow marketers to deliver full-screen vertical video Snaps, directly to their users' chat inbox.

According to Snap:

"Snapchatters can choose to open the Snap and can engage by sending a message directly to the advertiser, or using the call-to-action to open a predetermined link."

Sponsored Snaps will be branded with a badge so that they can be partially distinguished within the list of chats as well as the requirement that such snaps are not dispatched to be viewed to receive push notifications.
"If Sponsored Snaps are unread, they will automatically be deleted from the inbox."

It's a risk bet for Snap, allowing advertisers to intrude into a more private element; however, given the company's need to grow its business opportunities, it'll have to become more creative with ad options to incentivize more spend.

Of course, you can bet that brand partners will be itching to get to Snapchatters' inboxes, but I do see a small rebellion brewing here-at least in the short term-and it could be trouble for the app.

Stay tuned, but Snap will first pilot Sponsored Snaps with Disney before rolling them out to other advertisers shortly.

The Promoted Places feature will let businesses pin their stores on the Snap Map.

No visual example yet, but Snap's Promoted Places in Maps is launching first with partners McDonalds and Taco Bell, which gives advertisers some idea of what they can expect to get from their own Map promotions.

With over 350M Snapchatters using the Snap Map each month, Promoted Places will help advertisers reach incremental customers, gain visibility and engage with users in a new, local and innovative way. We have learned that marking places as "Top Picks" lifts visitation by a typical 17.6% for frequent Snapchat users relative to those that view a place without an annotation.

The update is more sensible here for the ad tools of Snap, and once again, you can easily see an appeal to the advertisers. It may not be as responsive and appealing as the inbox messages are, but it is another way to reach out to Snap's young audience.

Both are promising, incredibly interesting, but there's always this lingering risk of over-commercializing what's generally a private messaging app. Snap, of course, is always looking to expand on this behavior, but research shows that the majority of Snap users prefer the privacy and intimacy of the app.

Will inbox ads impact that?

We'll see.