4 Marketing Use Cases for AR Today
Photo by Daniel Chen.
Augmented reality is making the leap from hyped technology of the future to driver of cutting-edge marketing techniques today. To document the state of the field and shine a light on those use cases, the IAB released its AR marketing playbook earlier this month.
In case you’re too busy to peruse the pdf, I’ll detail the major use cases outlined in the report.
First-Party Consumer/Social Platforms. These are the dog ears and tongue you know and may or may not love. Right now, these are mostly useful for their role in the economy of attention. Entertaining visual effects keep mobile users coming back.
Gaming. This application relies on a similar gimmick and has the same marketing effect as the AR-enhanced platforms. Popular mobile games including Jurassic World Alive and Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs have been boosted by AR, which allows users to encounter dinosaurs in their own neighborhoods and take a walk in digital worlds.
Search. This will be a big one in years to come. Visual search will join voice and text search as the third major modality for scouring the Web for information. Google debuted this at its developer conference just last month, demonstrating that searching for a great white shark may just make one appear right before the mobile user’s eyes.
Retail. Gradually gaining adoption, AR for retail may soon prove indispensable for furniture and home goods seller who want to let online shoppers visualize what a new couch will look like in their own homes. Ikea is one of this technique’s pioneers.
