Augmented Reality Hitting The Stands
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A new wave of advertising that blends the real world with the virtual one is making its way into the hands of consumers. NY1's Adam Balkin filed the following report.It's called augmented reality, taking something from the real world, like the current issue of Popular Science Magazine and having it trigger and control something in the virtual world. Usually, the technology is triggered by holding it up to a computer's webcam.
"It's a tremendous new way of kind of interacting with an image between the physical world and your computer screen and it's the first time it's ever been done with a magazine cover, from our standpoint if it drives people to buy the magazine, great, but it's more important to get them interacting with the magazine and the brand and getting them to think 'Hmm, this is something really interesting and Popular Science is behind it'," said Mark Jannot of Popular Science Magazine.
This is hardly the first example of augmented reality put out for consumption by the general public. NY1 reported several months ago when Topps started selling baseball cards that bring players to virtual life, or Sony's Eye of Judgement card game that uses the Playstation 3's webcam. Movie studios, car companies, food distributors are also experimenting with the technology as it becomes the cool new way to get brand recognition.
It could easily be argued that the periodical industry has the most to gain over any excitement generated by augmented reality. Every day, more and more people are dropping their subscriptions and instead just going online. As a result, more and more newspapers and magazines are going out of business. Developments like augmented reality could give people a new reason to keep buying hardcopy paper, and also give advertisers renewed interest in spending money on print ads.
"Instead of just having within an article or in an add 'Visit our website', there's a way to actually bring the print publication to the Internet and have them interact in a meaningful but how can publications and advertisers bring value to the consumer because the tech wonder is going to wear off eventually," said Kunur Patel of Creativity Magazine.