Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, January 20

• Snapchat embraces offline purchase ad targeting: Snap will now allow advertisers to use Oracle’s Data Cloud (formerly Datalogix) third-party data about what users buy offline to target ads on Snapchat, according to The Wall Street Journal. Snap tells TechCrunch that this rolled out over the last few weeks, and will allow targeting to 100 different customer demographics like “cosmetics shopper” or “consumer tech shopper.”Yet the ad targeting based on what people buy at the grocery store that Snapchat is now offering fits that bill. Spiegel was talking about retargeted ads for specific products you looked at online. But offline purchase targeting will also produce ads that have users wondering, “How did they know I buy that?”  How Snap’s new ad targeting works - First, Oracle Data Cloud collects data from retail stores about what you buy. Normally the company offers thousands of different demographic profiles and even specific brand buyers that businesses can target, but Snapchat has whittled that down to 100. These include “men’s clothing buyer” or “car shopper.” All uploaded user IDs and email addresses are hashed for privacy, encrypted and anonymized, and Snap matches them to its users. Snapchat advertisers can then ask to target one of these segments of users and measure their impact on offline purchases, and they buy the ads through an auction or directly from Snap. It’s currently testing the targeting system with brands like Honda, Kia and The Honest Company.

• Amazon job posting suggests plan to bring shopping experiences into VR: Amazon has stayed relatively silent on the topic of VR-based e-commerce and the VR platform in general, especially as fellow tech titans like Facebook and Google have devoted so many resources to virtual reality. However, the company has been looking to embrace VR content. Last month the company hired former Tribeca Film Festival head Genna Terranova to oversee VR projects at the company’s studio. Now it appears Amazon is looking to bring VR into the shopping experience. A recent job posting shows that the company is looking for a creative director of VR to “envision the future of Amazon’s VR solutions,” Variety reports. The job is with the company’s A9 division, which oversees product search and advertising technologies. The posting claims that the division is “building Amazon’s VR shopping experience for use by millions of customers on a wide variety of VR devices.” There isn’t too much more in the way of details otherwise; VR certainly offers consumers the chance to observe items in more detail at scale in 3D, but we’ll ultimately have to wait and see just how much Amazon wants to see shoppers put on VR headsets before they press the buy button.

• IBM revenue fall dims upbeat profit forecast: International Business Machines Corp reported its 19th straight quarter of declining revenue, but forecast full-year earnings above Wall Street estimates due to growth in newer areas such as cloud-based services and analytics. However, investments to drive growth in the cloud business and the company's shift to a subscription-based as-a-service model hit its operating gross margin by 1.8 percentage points to 51 percent in the fourth quarter. IBM's shares were down 2.5 percent at $162.70 after rising briefly in extended trading. The company's revenue fell 1.3 percent to $21.77 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31, but beat analysts' expectations of $21.64 billion. Net income rose to $4.50 billion, or $4.72 per share, from $4.46 billion, or $4.59 per share, helped partly by a lower tax rate. IBM's shares rose 30.2 percent in the last 12 months, outperforming the 23.2 percent gain in the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average.