5 Innovative Ways to Use AR in Holiday Marketing
A technology that was once considered to be on the fringes of digital marketing has moved into the mainstream, as retailers around the country find new ways to use AR in their 2019 holiday campaigns. From virtual try-ons to camera filters designed to drive people into physical store locations, there’s no limit to the number of ways creative marketers can use AR. Enterprising retailers are capitalizing on the momentum as they come up with smarter ways to help shoppers contextually visualize what products will look like on their bodies and in their homes.
Let’s take a look at how five major companies are using AR for holiday marketing this year.
November Focus: The Holiday Blitz is Here
This year’s holiday shopping season is not new (by definition), but there will be salient differences and revelations this season. The past year has seen lots of retail innovation as the industry looks to counteract the cautionary tales of late-adopting counterparts in the “retailpocolypse” graveyard.
It’s those innovations and integrations that will be exposed when put to the stress test of the holiday shopping blitz. After reading and writing about them in the pages of Street Fight all year, we’ll now get a look at how a lot of these implementations perform (good or bad) with greater shopping scale.
LBMA Vidcast: Snapchat Using OOH & AR; Gig Economy Under Fire
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Snapchat using OOH + AR, Zippin has store at Sacramento Kings stadium, Gig Economy under fire in California, Michael’s Stores + UPS, Wirecard partners with SES-imagotag, UPS gets drone fleet approval in U.S.
LBMA Vidcast: Amazon to Roll Out Hand Recognition Payment at Whole Foods
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Skoda announces in-car voice assistant Laura, Philadelphia bans stores that don’t accept cash, Kochava teams with CubeIQ, GOAT let’s you try on exclusive sneakers in AR, Olo powering restaurant orders from Google search and maps, Amazon to roll-out hand recognition payment at Whole Foods.
LBMA Vidcast: Verizon Media Turns to AR; Uber Testing Essential Grocery Delivery Down Under
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Verizon Media goes AR, Pared app for restaurants, Veeve re-invents the shopping cart, Uber testing milk/bread delivery in Australia, Albert Heijn piloting their own Amazon GO, Apple quietly adds UWB to iPhone 11.
5 Predictions for Mobile Technology After the Mass Adoption of 5G
The new 5G standard for phones is just starting to make a splash. There’s a lot to do in the development department and lots of equipment installations necessary before everyone can enjoy 5G hyper speeds.
While there are some predictions on the transition from the current 4G LTE dominance to 5G, nobody really knows how long it will take. But what happens once it does and 5G is the new standard?
Here are five most likely to happen scenarios that await us in the near future.
Is Visual Mapping the Next Google-Apple Battleground?
As Google and Apple lead the way, we are getting closer to ubiquitous visual mapping. If that happens, there will be significant implications for entities that currently use search and mapping for marketing or online presence. They’ll need to make sure they are optimized in this new format.
This could lead to an extension of SEO to cultivate presence in visual experiences. Just like in search, correct business location and details will need to be optimized to show up in the right places. You don’t want the AR overlay for your restaurant floating above the salon next door.
What Retail Has Learned About AR Since Pokémon Go
Retailers are only beginning to realize the potential of AR. As a new generation of shoppers steeped in AR grows up, their expectations will exceed the novelty acts the industry has put out to date. AR features won’t just be a one-off promo or tied to a game release; they will become the basis of the in-store customer experience, one that looks nothing like the retail of today.
LBMA Vidcast: Walmart and WhatsApp, Gucci Tries Out AR
On this week’s Location-Based Marketing Association podcast: Walmart Mexico accepts WhatsApp orders, Nex raises £2M for lunch discovery, Gucci lets try on shoes in AR, 7Eleven delivers to beaches & parks, Reveal Mobile launches foot traffic attribution, Trax acquires Shopkick.
AR Impacts Local Commerce, Disrupting Home Services and Retail
AR is emerging at a time when the physical retail world is undergoing significant transformation. Things like Amazon Go stores and the counteractive “retail as a service” movement have raised awareness and hunger for retail evolution. So AR’s retail shopping use cases fall on fertile soil.
But retail is just one way that AR intersects with local commerce. AR comes into play in another key local commerce category: home services. Innovators like Streem are bringing remote assistance to traditional service calls (think: busted pipe).
4 Marketing Use Cases for AR Today
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.
At I/O, Google Offers a New Vision for Local Search
The notion of “helping you get things done,” emphasized by Sundar Pichai in his I/O keynote, provides a through-line for many of the event’s announcements. It struck me watching the presentations how thoroughly Google has become a consumer electronics company, a marketer of devices where search is more a central feature than a standalone product. Google, in other words, has become thoroughly dedicated to marketing its famous search capabilities in the context of devices that help you perform daily tasks. In the process, it is transforming local search and how we relate to the world with electronic devices.
Visual Search and Local: A Match Made in Mountain View
Though visual search challengers such as Snapchat and Pinterest could shine in niche use cases such as fashion items, Google will rule as the best all-around utility for visual search. It has the deepest tech stack, and the substance (knowledge graph) to be useful beyond just a flashy novelty for identifying things visually.
The name of the game now is to get users to adopt it. Google Lens won’t be a silver bullet and will shine in a few areas where Google is directing users, such as pets and flowers. But it will really shine in product search, which happens to be where monetization will eventually come into the picture.
The Promise of XR and 5G
As we approach the 5G era, the dramatic quantum leap of 5G service enhances many creative capabilities in XR, providing richer user experiences and giving marketers and developers a larger digital playground to expand their creative talents.
Still, there’s confusion in the market over how these innovations work and, critically, how they can work together. Let’s take a closer look.
Is Google Building an “Internet of Places?”
Use cases will materialize over time, but it’s already clear that visual search can carry lots of commercial intent. Point your phone at a store or restaurant to get business details. Point your phone at a pair of shoes on the street to find out prices, reviews, and purchase info. This proximity between the searcher and the subject indicates high intent, which means higher conversions and more money for Google. Moreover, visual search has the magic combination of frequency and utility, which could make it the first scalable AR use case: making the real world clickable.
How 6 Brands Are Using AR to Drive Experience Marketing
Worldwide spending on AR is expected to reach $215 billion by 2021, as new hardware ships and AR moves further into the mainstream. Acceleration in the AR market is also being boosted by brands’ growing frustration over the limitations in display advertising. With AR, brands can bypass ad blockers and unleash their creativity in a bid to capture the attention of consumers. Let’s take a look at how six top brands are using AR for experience marketing right now.
Omnichannel Optimization: What’s Changing (and What Isn’t) in Post-Screen Search
For brand marketers, addressing the expansion of local search into voice and visual contexts is really a matter of digging in and getting more involved with rich local context that appears to grow more expansive by the day. Google alone has introduced a vast array of opportunities for business to differentiate themselves from the competition, including photos, videos, 360° virtual tours, business descriptions, menus, Posts, reviews, and several other features.
Will Audio AR Drive Local Commerce?
Mike Boland: AR may not play out in the way you think, at least in the near term. Though it’s generally thought of as graphical overlays on your field of view, another “overlay” could be more viable in the near term: sound. This “audio AR” modality could come sooner than—and eventually coexist with—its graphical cousin.
What’s Visual Search, and How Will It Play Out in 2019?
While visual search isn’t exactly catching on like fire yet, its evolution is buttressed by powerful developments of late in the tech industry. Among these: smartphones are increasingly ubiquitous, more efficient, and we’re all more accustomed to using them; investment in AI from both big companies and startups is widespread, making machine vision more effective; and augmented reality (AR), a similar modality in which tech overlays graphics onto images captured via camera lens, is taking off. Below are a few ways visual search will play out in local and retail in 2019.
6 Ways Brands Can Reach New Audiences with TikTok
TikTok is currently unavoidable, in particular when it comes to targeting Generation Z. At the moment there seems to be no way for advertisers and marketers to bypass this platform. But what is it exactly, and what advertising opportunities does it offer brands and agencies?