A few years ago, advertisers discovered that millennials, in particular, do not interact with ads. It became apparent that this generation wanted not to be talked to, but instead be talked with.
Born out of the video game augmented reality company Loreful, glimmar assists their clients by integrating AR into their advertisements.
Embracing AR in ads is something that the glimmar team argues makes sense. AR is an immersive experience that involves viewers in the story advertisers are trying to tell or the experience they are trying to give their potential customers.
“Advertising evolves at the speed of our culture and technology, and that’s what is happening now with AR,” said Aharon Cagle, CEO of glimmar. “Advertising is moving into this realm that it’s never really been in before.”
Cagle said the driving force behind the change in advertising is being driven by what the industry is learning about millennials. While a typical media ad doesn’t involve the consumer as an active participant, the deeper experiences that millennials desire can be met through AR.
And most people who use the technology are already in that age bracket. In fact, 80 million millennials are interacting with AR right now.
However, glimmar is about being more than just immersive. The startup also aims to help clients make their experience seamless. That’s why it creates AR opportunities that don’t require downloading an app.
“The problem that existed at the time we started our company was that in order to view an AR experience from an ad, a consumer had to tap on the ad and download an app to view that experience,” Cagle said.
“Advertising is moving into this realm that it’s never really been in before.”
The team behind glimmar knows that it can be difficult to entice users to download an extra app on their phone
The solution? Tapping into the AR app users already have on their phone: their internet browser.
In fact, an AR experience can be delivered right from a URL. Cagle said that anywhere you can place a URL, you can access AR. This technology is so cutting-edge that Apple has only recently released several pieces that make it possible.
While glimmar is less than one year old — the UpTech accelerator grad was established in August 2017 — the startup is actively talking to clients that will implement AR into their ads. While Cagle can’t talk about what these ads will look like quite yet, he said they will expose consumers to things they’ve never seen before.
“Right now, what you see a lot of are things with very Snapchat-like executions, where people are putting things on their face or manipulating their face in some way,” Cagle said. “We’re advocating that we want to create an experience beyond the face. We want to change the sides of buildings, put things into the real world that you can manipulate. Every project we’ve talked about has been manipulating projects in the real world, whether that’s a package or the side of a wall.”
Beyond developing their technology and utilzing the AR elements released by Apple and Google, the glimmar team is also excited to see where AR will go next.
Their consensus? Smart glasses. While wayfinding apps such as "Pokemon Go" are common in AR, Cagle said this isn’t very useable, and not everyone wants to hold up their phone to view AR experiences.
“Smart glasses take AR to a level that is more accessible to people," he continued. "Wayfinding while looking through glasses could be potentially very huge if Apple develops this."
