Technology

Reality check

By Charis Palmer

December 11, 2009

The Commonwealth Bank has begun experimenting with augmented reality in marketing campaigns as the industry investigates what role the technology could play in customer service and content delivery.

The bank integrated augmented reality into a campaign pitched at 14-17 year olds, as part of a competition where customers could design their own pair of Dunlop Volley shoes and then view them in 3D.

"Augmented reality has been around for many years," says Geoffrey Handley, managing director of global mobile marketing agency The Hyperfactory.

"However, it is only recently that marketers have picked up on how the technology can be used to engage a mobile audience."

Handley says augmented reality campaigns are about interaction and empowerment. "These campaigns create a huge viral or word-of-mouth effect, which is great for creating awareness and engagement. One person may tell or show the application to as many as 10 friends and family members."

But beyond marketing, the proponents of augmented reality argue it could be used to help serve customers and provide them with useful location-based information. "There's no doubt the first movers in augmented reality have done it for novelty effect," says Handley. "However, this technology is set to grow exponentially with the mass adoption of smart phones and the possibility to add more interactive elements to augmented reality applications."

Rocky Scopelliti, general manager of industry development of financial services at Telstra, agrees.

"We think of it as a progressive journey. We're unlikely to see the fully integrated experience on day one, but what is changing is the technology environment that's enabling corporates to think about this."

With ubiquitous broadband Internet and convergence of devices, Scopelliti says the delivery of content is changing, in both form and structure.

"Content is multi-modal, combining video, image and text, and we're now starting to see banks talk about experts on demand and the visual representation of the bank."

Video gets a play
Scopelliti says the first step towards the use of augmented reality for serving customers will be greater use of video in telecommunications. He cites the case study of Spanish bank Bankinter, which is now conducting more than 1,000 video calls a day.

Handley says in the short term, there is the ability for users of augmented reality to incorporate more live information feeds and interactive animations.

Imagine a world where you could be visually guided to the nearest ATM, view the cost of insuring a car you are looking at while at the car dealership, or see a 3D view of the limit left on your credit card as you use it.
"The beauty of augmented reality is that it can be applied to almost any concept, as long as you have a strong creative angle. We've seen it used to build 3D models of cars and shoes, in interactive games, and to display messages hidden in SMS."

A recent report from Juniper Research predicts the market for mobile augmented reality services will reach US$732 million by 2014, with revenues derived from a combination of paid-for app downloads, subscription-based services and advertising. Juniper says initial service adoption will be driven by location-based search, with the first substantial revenues to come from augmented reality-enabled games, bolstered by revenues from mobile enterprise solutions from 2012-13 onwards.


What is augmented reality?
Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery, creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (eg. adding computer vision and object recognition), the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view.
Source: Wikipedia