Emotional Experiences: Will AR Kill Video Advertising?
We hear a lot of chatter about augmented reality, but it seems that no one is quite sure exactly how to use the tech.
In June, Weather Channel debuted its immersive reality technology to create a hyper-realistic tornado. A+E Networks dove into AR last year with the release of the “Knightfall AR” game.
But one space where AR can really thrive is marketing and advertising. Approximately 85% of enterprises surveyed are expected to adopt AR and VR initiatives by the end of this year, according to Deloitte Digital CMO Alicia Hatch.
“It’s happening all over the place, heavily in manufacturing,” Hatch explained at Digital Place-based Advertising Association’s Video Everywhere Summit in NYC Tuesday. “We’re seeing that these technologies are mostly being used to save money or reinvent a business model. Digital out-of-home is growing. It’s demonstrating an incredible amount of innovation right now, and it’s only going to increase.”
Hatch believes that AR is going to eventually become more dominant in advertising than video, largely due to experience marketing. Michael Potts, vp of design at Weather Channel, sees brand integration using AR in the future.
“An evolution is really smart and intelligent ways that brands and sponsorships can get involved and innovated with,” Potts told Cablefax . “The entire experience for the consumer isn’t jarring, it just feels natural and an extension of what we’re already doing. And that’s going to resonate with advertisers and sponsors.”
To Hatch, the most important consumer data is emotional data, and she sees a future where it is possible to measure the “pheromones released from someone’s forehead.”
“Video is not going away, but AR as the star? Being able to truly create experiences in surround sound, natively through your world, being able to engage emotions, being able to extend their quality of life, is really what experience marketing will be about,” Hatch said.
Digital out-of-home advertising is really where AR is expected to thrive. By 2019, approximately $4.5bln is expected to be spent on DOOH in the US, according to Zenith. Gartner reports that by 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen, and 100mln customers will shop in augmented reality.
“The barriers to entry for extending DOOH experiences are about to collapse,” Hatch said. “We’re in literally a mobile explosion. It’s been the year of mobile for so long, no one’s noticing this. But the device proliferation is going to enable a huge potential for DOOH. AI threaded through those devices and connected through the DOOH ecosystem will be powerful.”
Hatch predicts that by 2021 there will be much wider spread use of AR in marketing.
“We’ve been talking about the customer experience forever, but an experience when you’re staring at a screen, is that really an experience? You can hardly engage consumers in a meaningful and emotional way unless you’re in the real world. Being able to enhance the physical world, that’s powerful. This notion of engagement is at the core of it, we’re really trying to drive and influence human emotions,” she explained.
Change may be coming, but traditional advertising still has plenty of runway.
“I think it’s safe to say that augmented reality is certainly coming along, but that TV advertising and in the home, is extremely strong, continues to be strong, and not only is it not going away any time soon it will continue to garner the majority of advertisers’ budgets,” said Canoe’s head of sales and marketing Chris Pizzurro.