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Shazam execs' talk of using their proprietary data for advertising puts them in league with The Weather Company, Pandora and Amazon, which are all mining information like pollen count, song choices and product purchases to inform ad targeting. Mr. McGurn said the Shazam app ingests the live audio feed from 160 TV networks every day. That positions the app as an ally to TV networks trying to stem their share of ad spend from being siphoned online.

Shazam is also currying favor with TV networks as a way to drive viewership. For last fall's Country Music Association Awards, Shazam pushed alerts featuring the show's air date and time to the in-app news feeds of eight million users who might be interested in watching, like those who had previously tagged a Blake Shelton song. Ten million people received such a notification for The Grammys.

People who use Shazam to "tag" the game's broadcast this year will be shown a new Twitter-like timeline. The live content feed will document the game -- from tweets to photos to ads -- and is designed to keep people using Shazam for the duration. But even if people tune in and out of the app, Shazam has created a new ad-retargeting program that plugs into Facebook.

Bitmojis could add a way to express how users feel when they aren't taking a selfie. Snapchat allows people to place standard emojis on photos and videos, but bitmojis purport to do a better job of showing emotion because there's a face -- albeit a cartoonish one -- attached. Snapchat could even generate revenue here, by charging users for special-edition bitmojis just as Bitstrips has done.

The bitmoji also could come into play in Snapchat's text chat feature, which is tucked away behind the image-sharing elements. Snapchat is said to be working on a major overhaul of texting that would bring audio chat and more. It's easy to see bitmojis being a part of that too, giving people a way to communicate visually without having to take photos themselves.