Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is a new form of advertising that allows consumers to interact with products through the user of their smartphones or tablets. The applications work by scanning certain products, which have the augmented reality coding imbedded within the design and therefore once the product is scanned this generates some form of advertising, which “comes to life” and allows the user to interact with the advertisement.

The growth of augmented reality will benefit highly from the increase of smartphone ownership, also the increase in bandwidths within the handset as Augmented Reality will use the consumers internet, and also a number of brands will select mobile campaign in order to increase the interaction with the consumer and also drive commerce (Lauren Johnson, 2012).

Augmented reality comes in many shapes and sizes varying from a number of different applications, and there are many areas that can benefit from augmented reality technology. Augmented Reality was initially created for military use, but has gone on to be used and is still be used in industrial and within the medial industry. But advertisers have seen the potential it could have within the advertising industry and are taking full advantage of this technology to find a new means of interacting and engaging with the consumer.

Augmented reality has helped commerce by allowing customer to interact in a new way with products, such as allowing the user to view what inside a products packaging without opening it.

Brands such as Ikea have used Augmented Reality the help customers with selecting products as this gives them the user of an idea of how these good make look once purchase and placed within their bedroom or living room for example. The most common means of advertising through the use of AR is with the use of printed materials. I have found a number of these printed materials within magazine, which state that these means of advertising consists of “Blippar” coding and therefore once I opened the Blippar application and scanned the picture/s the advertisers came to life. The way in which its work is by using image recognition this activates a video of some form of animation through a video of or through moving pictures and therefore this allows the user to interact with the consumer.

Augmented reality is a great service, which allows consumers to interact with products and services through their digital devices but many people believe that potential consumers are not aware of this service enough. The amount of money that is spent on augmented reality for advertising purposes could be going to waste as consumers fail to fully interact with this advertisement. This is a problem that even industry specialist had been made aware of. A study, which was carried out by Juniper Research stated that “without an increase of consumer, it will be difficult for the mobile augmented reality industry to reach to those who are yet to be are of this service” (Charlotte Miller, 2012).

The awareness of augmented reality needs to come to light so that consumers are more likely to use these services so that not only can they receive interactive means of advertising but they will also be able to carryout transactions using these services. I believe that if consumers had more information available about how to use Augmented Reality and consumers also became more aware of products consist of these special coding then they would be more inclined to use the service.

Augmented Reality will have and impact on the advertising world as it will interact with them in a different way, but the fundamental factor would be keeping consumers engaged. Its only a matter of time before we all see augmented reality having a stronger presence in both advertising but also companies such as Ikea have adopted this technology to help their customer choose what products will look better within their consumers house environment.  

I think it will work for a while but I think it will just get boring and I think consumers will become used to this service and I see it more as a novelty at the moment than a means of advertising or as a means for educational purposes. I also think that the interacting factor could prove to be a negative impact as consumers can be very impatient and therefore this technology takes patients to be use and therefore this could also prove that augmented reality will not be as effective as the potential in which it does have.

Augmented Reality is meant to improve advertising and shopping experiences, and to add more of an interactive fun element to advertising, but it is missing the most critical aspect of all good means of advertising the simplicity of an effective campaign (Michael Krivicka, 2012).

Unlike other means of advertising, Augment Reality needs more consumer involvement, therefore to gain the involvement, the process would need to become easier so that more consumers not only react to this means of advertising but also more consumers could be made aware of it through the success it could possibly gain.

Potential means of development for the future could be the adaptation from school so that they can use this technology for teaching purposes, as I believe that children will find it much easier to interact with a moving object through a tablet then they will do with the use of a book. Also this technology could be used for medicine purpose as this will allow for people to gain a better understanding of how certain organs work and also be able to interact the a tablet or smartphone device to increase their know about with the topic.

Augmented Reality has the potential to become the next successive advertising means as the increase on both smartphone and tablet increase this will mean that more people will be able to use their smart devices to interact with these advertisements. With the correct knowledge being spread to the consumer and therefore making the consumers more aware of this technology and how to use it, as this could be the missing part of the adaption of augmented reality within all aspects or marketing. The only problem with this technology I think it that I needs to remove the novelty factor as this could be the aspect in which holds the development and also the usage of augmented reality back.