Is it time for augmented reality advertising to take off?

Remember the sudden interest in QR codes two years ago? Is it now the turn of augmented reality advertising to enjoy a moment of fame?

We blogged in April 2011 about the rapid adoption of QR Codes  which spread like a rash over advertising and catalogues linking the print medium to the web without the bother of typing in a url. it seemed like a great idea at the time, but in reality demonstrated once again that when it comes to the Internet people are lazy and not prepared to wait either. The novelty of switching on an iPhone, opening the app, focus/scan and click and up comes a web page was an interesting experience for a while, but often the link led to content that failed to please. Disappointing content was poor enough return for the effort and locating the QR codes themselves on bus sides or across tube tracks on the London Underground were reason enough to forget the whole idea. Time to move on.

Augmented reality advertising has been debated by marketing people for a couple of years or more and as implented by blippar requires their image recognition app for, "bringing to life real-world newspapers, magazines, products and posters with exciting augmented reality experiences and instantaneous content. There is even an Augmented Reality summit scheduled for London in June promoted with the tag line "Where the physical & digital worlds meet."

So does it work? technically the answer is that I got it going quite quickly - downloaded the app, pointed it at a page of the Metro, tapped the screen and up popped a video clip. Much smoother than QR codes. To try it yourself get the blippar app from the app store, open it and point it at the image on this page and hopefully you will  see the video promo clip. The response could equally be a "web link, video, competition, interactive game, poll, coupon ... anything!"