Augmented Reality Advertising: Is Your Business Ready?

Investing in technology for technology’s sake is a common error, especially for smaller enterprises. If you want to be confident of success with augmented reality in marketing campaigns, it’s a good idea to spend some time evaluating the need. That begins with asking the right questions:

1. Why will you use augmented reality in advertising and marketing? What goals are you going to achieve?
2. How exactly will you use augmented reality in your marketing campaigns?
3. What are the challenges you might face? Will you be able to overcome them and, if so, how?

With those questions answered, it will be easier to assess the pros and cons of innovating with AR-driven campaigns. It will also clarify what is needed to follow realistic expectations rather than gamble.

Do you want to develop a cult-like following for your brand, product, or product range? If so, you might want to think about how you can make related AR experiences as accessible as possible. That can be challenging when campaigns are dependent on consumers downloading an app.

Instead, you can consider taking campaigns to a public setting by using AR screens or mirrors, as Pepsi did with their Monster Mirror campaign back in 2014. The beverage conglomerate installed an AR mirror with face recognition technology in the bathroom of a London cinema. Movie-goers were shocked—and had a story to share on social media—when they looked into the mirror and saw a zombie, scary clown, or werewolf staring back at them.

Does your company have the budget and resources to take your campaigns beyond the constraints of user-downloaded mobile apps? If so, your preparation might include evaluating specialized hardware. You may also want to think about the ways to link the AR experience to digital media channels, such as YouTube, to maximize consumers’ immersion in your brand experience.

Perhaps your company is not yet capable of leveraging the IoT as Pepsi continues to do with campaigns like the Unbelievable Bus Shelter, using live outdoor video feeds and 3D animations. If that is the case, you will probably need to settle for AR in your branded mobile app. This will allow you to create unlimited campaigns using a single core application.

If you choose this path, as many organizations will, is it wise to create a marker-based AR app to revive print ads, billboards, or catalogs with integrated video and interactive objects? Or perhaps a location-based app for gamified campaigns, encouraging customer engagement with your brand? These are other questions to answer while preparing for a marketing future with AR.

Perhaps, your objectives are more focused on local advertising and increasing foot traffic in traditional offline sales outlets. In that case, you may want to develop a strategy combining location-based AR to help people find your stores with marker-based solutions to enliven the experience for shoppers once they arrive.

Lowes, for example, is probably most famous for operating truly cavernous home improvement centers. Now, the retailer is also becoming known as an augmented reality innovator.

Lowes has implemented a dual home-improvement app solution, giving shoppers the ability to style and design their homes or rooms using virtual versions of the products. Once shoppers arrive at a store, they can follow visual turn-by-turn routing on their phone screens to locate all the products they have picked. This is a great example of how advertising and information can be strategically combined using AR to engage shoppers in-store and at home.

Once you know your objectives for AR-driven advertising, you should make sure your team is aware of the challenges you may face and be ready to overcome them. There are three primary challenges, in particular, that are worthy of mention and should certainly be considered in your preparations for AR marketing.

Given that augmented reality software overlays digital data onto a person’s view of the real world, it must be delivered via some form of hardware with an element of visual functionality. This may not be the case in the future if projected holograms become a reality. But for now, marketers must either invest in the types of hardware that allows for public-delivery AR campaigns or create app-based experiences that people can access on personal mobile devices.

However, as experience with most forms of mobile marketing reveals, the current dependence on apps can be an obstacle, because you have to persuade people to download them. So, before you can use AR to market your products or services, you must have a strategy in place to advertise your AR concept. You will also need to market your augmented reality app to your target audiences.

Making AR available and practical on smartphones is still a work in progress. With traditional AR requiring the use of a headset, the technology needs to be successfully scaled down to work on mobile devices. Also, the user needs to be satisfied with their interaction with AR apps to keep coming back to them. 

The Pokémon GO app, for example, frustrated many users because it required them to swipe on the screen in order to interact. Swiping is not something that is done in our normal lives when not using mobile devices, so that element left some users unsatisfied with the interaction technique.

Another factor to consider is that not everyone has a smartphone, and those who do may not have the latest version or keep up with their software updates. This could prevent the app from working properly or even prohibit users from downloading it in the first place.

Of course, mobile device graphics capabilities and other onboard components are continually improving. At this point though, it’s still prudent to consider if now is the right time for your business to start using augmented reality app advertising. You may decide that it is a little too early and therefore presents too much risk.

Does your company have an in-house development team, and, if so, does it include augmented reality developers? AR apps are not the most straightforward to develop, although with the launch of Apple ARKit and Google ARCore SDKs the process has become easier.

If you wish to create apps compatible with older versions of iOS and Android though, you will still need people with appropriate coding skills to create augmented reality software. If you don’t have the internal resources, you’ll need to seek help from a development company that specializes in or at least has ample experience with AR software engineering.