The advertising world is changing so rapidly that we barely have time to get acquainted with a technology that a new one comes up. After the QR code, meet  *drum-roll* Blippar!

What is Blippar? 

Blippar is a London based startup that was launched in Summer 2011. It uses the augmented reality technology to give advertising the WOW effect “enabling you to make a social and emotional connection with your customer [...]“

How to use Blippar?

Reasons to use Blippar:

According to Blippar, these are the reasons to use it:

• Innovative: Your brand can communicate with customers in a whole new way that makes all your above-the-line ad creative (print, outdoor, in-store or on-packet) come alive. Your customers can experience your product or service in a fun and innovative way via their smartphone screen- and crucially, they actively request and ‘pull’ that content as opposed to it being pushed to wash over them.
• Low Cost: Above the line spend is expensive for most brands and consumes a large proportion of the marketing budget. By using the Blippar AR (Augmented Reality) platform, you can significantly improve ROI on existing spend.  With a Blippar campaign, you can have more brand interaction at a fraction of the cost of print advertising.  And crucially, the platform itself works on a google-style pricing model, where the entry cost to the platform is low and ongoing costs are performance related.
• Measurable: With the Blippar AR platform, you can track and measure how your traditional advertising formats are performing – wherever your ‘Blipps’ are located – whether in a press campaign, outdoor campaign, on-pack or in-store. Blippar comes with full AnalyzAR suite which tracks user behaviour, location and interaction patterns in real time.
• Location Based Targeting: With Blippar AR platform you can target your users with bespoke AR interactions according to the time of day or the location of the user.  You can find out more about your customer’s buying behavior and target them with more contextual content out of your print media and outdoor advertising.

I would you also add:

• Visually attractive: Blippar uses the advertisement itself as a trigger to the virtual content.
• Allows a various choice of content: Blippar doesn’t just open pages on the internet. Mobile AR is the use of a computer algorithm to recognise an image or object through the camera function on a mobile device and return a response which ‘overlays’ the trigger image. This response could take the form of an interactive 3d graphic layer, a video or an HTML page superimposing content or imagery over the camera’s view of the real world.
• Doesn’t require much: All you need to do is download the app, click on it and your done! Find the Blippar “b” logo and your set! From you TV screen, to anything print on paper from a business card to a billboard on the road or even a grocery product.

Overall, I think it has quite an advantage over the QR code because you never know what to expect when you hover your phone over something “blippable”. The only thing is that unlike the QR Code, you can’t create your own content for free.

Blippar can be found on iTunes here. The Android version is still in Beta. So if you have an iPhone you can try it by using the images found here. It’s FUN! Now, the challenge will be spreading awareness about it and encourage people to download the application on their smartphone. With Blippar, advertising just reach a whole new visual level.

Now, I wonder which Lebanese company will be the first to revolutionize the way we go about advertising!

More about Blippar:

• Website
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Facebook Page

 Sources:

• Blippar