New Reality a Mixed One?

During the Saints vs Bears Wild Card Game on January 10th, CBS Sports unveiled its partnership with Nickelodeon through a number of creative, augmented, and mixed reality activations. Augmented Reality is particularly interesting to me as a digital marketing concept, especially during an era of social distancing and quarantine. It allows brands to engage with their audience through creative ways - mainly driving novel visualizations and an overall departure from a normal viewing experience. I think we're going to see augmented reality as a digital marketing strategy become one of the leading trends in 2021, especially since it hosts the potential for application on a global scale with more ease than completely virtual environments that require special apps or expensive hardware.

https://next.reality.news/news/nickelodeon-injects-broadcast-ar-fun-into-saints-vs-bears-nfl-playoff-game-0384224/

Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality & Digital Marketing

"Virtual reality" as well as "augmented reality" are well known to us as buzz words of 2017-2018. But does it mean that these technologies are not on the rise anymore? As for me, I would argue that these technologies have not reached their peak yet and are going to become more influential over the next years. Same is argued in Statista forecasts that predict the market to rise by 845% from 2019 to 2022.

We have to think what does it mean to Digital Marketing. 25% of professionals in the field stipulate that virtual reality will be the technology that will drive the most change in the coming two years. But how exactly these technologies can be used? They were already used by Coca-Cola that launched an AR campaign in China in 2018. That time in 2 weeks 6.6 million people viewed the animation. Somehow we are still do not use these technologies enough. I suppose it is due to society being resistant to habit change. I do still remember myself thinking that social networks is something new and useless and was trying to postpone registration as long as possible. But now almost no one can imagine his/her life without Facebook and/or Linkedin, right?

One strong reason to believe that VR & AR are going to be popular is the trend of people be more and more engaged with video and easily consumable content. While AR & VR have the same benefits, they are also even more fun. Moreover, they help customer to interact with the brand more and make purchase decisions easier. Ikea sees an opportunity in this field and helps people see a piece of furniture in their current interior by using VR. You do not have to overuse your imagination anymore.

Additional rational is that users appreciate and even expect to have personalised experience. AR & VR definitely made to provide immersive and controlled experience that can easily be tailored on the basis of preference. 

However, there is at least one challenge for expansion of VR, which is the need to have a particular equipment to be able to be engaged. AR on the other hand, is in a great position, because mobile device is enough to be able to be involved. And we know for a fact that mobile usage is rising.

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The Future of Virtual & Augmented Reality

Follow the below link for a fascinating interactive slide presentation highlighting the future of "reality" as we know it. Who are the major players? What do they do? How big can this market become and what could be the largest applications?

All of these questions (and more) are answered below:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3052209/tech-forecast/vr-and-augmented-reality-will-soon-be-worth-150-billion-here-are-the-major-pla#1

Augmented Reality Is Changing the game for Advertisers

Where virtual reality exists to create rich computer-generated environments, augmented reality (AR) has the ability to project layers of graphics, animation, sounds and smell, https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&v=si32CRVEvi4 ,  yes smell, onto real physical objects such as billboards, clothes, packaging etc.

While much of the technology is still in the early stages of commercial use, there are several AR products already in the marketplace with advertisers from luxury jewelry to beverage producers to musicians leveraging the technology to enhance their marketing campaigns.  As such, advertisers have the ability to engage with customers on a level previously not possible; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6irc0jwKC8

The AR industry has been evolving for several years now and has shifted towards a more segmented structure.  Companies have the ability to leverage out of the box applications to create one-off campaigns, or decide to fully develop custom apps and solutions for their customers, such as the below furniture app; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YV8lo-OxZQ#t=80

Forward looking, as applications for AR continue to evolve, where reality stops, advertisers have virtually unlimited options at their disposal to market their products in a digitally enhanced world.  Further, the benefits of AR go beyond the marketing budget, as AR will help marketers to not only better track advertising spend, but will also help companies become smaller in the brick and mortar sense, while expanding online.

Digital Marketing today. Lessons from Germany

Digital Marketing has faced many changes in the last year alone.  And companies that can stay one step ahead of the game are inspirations for others in the industry. Looking to some of the progress happening around the globe today we turn to Germany.

Goertz Virtual shoe store uses 3 Microsoft kinects, in order to allow users to virtually try on shoes in real time and share their new look via social platforms. With the use of augmented reality, Goertz is bringing new meaning to the "Pop-Up Shop".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uSn7c1uw1_A

Aurasma - Marketing in Augmented Reality

I went to the NY Tech meetup last month (awesome group of innovative, intelligent people that are doing incredible things in Tech... and Bloomburg stopped by!) and saw a really cool demo I wanted to share here: Aurasma.

Aurasma is "the world's first visual browser." I don't know what that means, but here's what happens. You open the app on your mobile device and point it at ANYTHING. Say you point it at a magazine ad for Revlon. The ad recognizes the magazine ad and overlays the ad with Revlon's latest TV spot (the video is literally playing in the shape and size of the magazine ad). On the backend, I think they're actually linking that image to the content manually, but once that becomes more automated (like AdWords), the possibilities are exciting. It would change the way we think about 360 marketing campaigns and branding.

It opens up a surreal world of curated, relevant and real-time content and in my opinion, blows QR codes out of the water.

Check it out (they could use a new name :) http://www.aurasma.com/what-is-it.jsp

Cloud powered facial recognition is terrifying

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/cloud-powered-facial-recognition-is-terrifying/245867/

New facial recognition software co-developed by Carnegie Mellon and Google is able to match your photo to your entire online presence in just minutes. The technology sources your information from the wealth of information that people have made available on various social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and also other web sources such as university and professional/company pages.

Interestingly, the implications of the software go beyond matching a face to personal data. Scientist were able to show that machine intelligence could be applied to the personal data to make predictions and inferences about the individuals. An example was presented where the facial recognition software was combined with another piece of software which predicted Social Security Numbers based on personal data such as age, geographic location, etc. By combining the two applications together researchers were able to determine an individuals social security number starting from a simple, anonymous photo.

Augmented Reality to drive Machine Learning

http://www.silicon.com/technology/software/2011/02/08/augmented-reality-machine-learning-and-the-cleric-39746937/

An interesting article on how the growth of Augmented Reality will further advancements in machine learning. As we demand more from AR applications, computers will need to get better at understanding more about our very unstructured world. Right now AR can layer information over our field of view to help us find the closest subway station or tell us more about a specific monument but tomorrows AR using screens embedded in our glasses or contact lenses will be able to apply a digital layer over many more things that we come in contact with. Imagine looking an interacting with a AR-enabled movie poster, or seeing someone Facebook profile when meeting him. These are examples of the types of AR applications we have to look forward to. And as our appetite for a more interactive environment grows so will the computational capabilities of computers needed to provide these future technologies.

Reality - Coming to an iPhone near you

You may or may not have heard of the next big wave to hit consumer products/marketing/gaming or just about every part of our lives - Augmented Reality (AR).

AR is basically the use of advanced technology to present digitized content & information projected into the real world or some representation of it. You can then interact with the digitized information in real time. This article details some of the applications and expectations of this new phenomenon. Brands such as Adidas and Nissan have already started using this as a marketing tool and the possibilities seem endless as experts expect to one day (very soon) for us to walk down the street seeing localized information about the buildings, people, companies and opportunities all around us projected onto special AR eyewear.

Something else interesting is that AR was at least partially pioneered right here at Columbia, with Professor Steven Feiner of the Department of Computer Science being a noted leader.