Augmented reality in advertising

Augmented reality has one commercially proven application in advertising and a large number of experiments that generated coverage and nothing else.

The proven use: seeing it in place

Showing a product in the customer's own environment before they buy it.

The measurable effect is on returns. Retailers implementing visualisation in these categories report meaningful reductions in return rates, which for online retail is a direct margin improvement.

The unproven use: branded experiences

Filters, games and interactive experiences that exist to be shared.

These produce impressions and a spike of activity in the first week, followed by nothing. The cost per meaningful interaction is high, and the recall effect is weak because the interaction is about the effect rather than the brand.

Occasionally one succeeds spectacularly, which sustains the category's reputation the way a lottery winner sustains ticket sales.

The app problem

Any experience requiring an application download loses the overwhelming majority of its potential audience at that step.

Web-based AR, running in the phone browser, removes the barrier and is now technically capable enough for most product visualisation. That change is what made the proven use case commercially viable.

The practical rule: if it needs an app, and the app has no other reason to exist, it will not be used.

Implementation, realistically

For product visualisation, the requirements are three-dimensional models of the products, which is the main cost and the main obstacle.

A retailer with 4,000 products cannot model all of them. The workable approach is to model the top sellers and the highest-return items, which captures most of the benefit for a fraction of the effort.

Where B2B applications work

Industrial and equipment sales use visualisation seriously: placing a machine in a workspace to check clearances, overlaying installation instructions, showing internal components.

That has a clearer return than most consumer applications, because it prevents specification errors that are expensive to correct.

The assessment

If you sell something whose appearance in situ matters and whose returns cost you money, product visualisation is a straightforward investment with a measurable payback.

Everything else in this category should be evaluated as an experiment with a defined budget and an expectation of no return.