INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Remember the scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruz walks through the mall and thousands of holographic ads pop up around him That reality
may not be as far off as we thought.Blippar, the augmented reality startup that launched back in 2011, is today announcing the launch of a
new product that would let retailers, airports, commercial real estate owners, etc
place augmented reality content across their space.The product is called the Blippar Visual Positioning System, and it uses computer vision
and augmented reality to help customers, tenants, etc
find their way through a large indoor space such as a grocery store, department store, or stadium.This isn&t Blippar foray into AR
The company launched the AR City app in the summer of 2017, which uses the camera of the phone to pinpoint a user location with better
accuracy than GPS, according to the company
Blippar rolled out functionality for AR City in more than 300 cities.But the visual positioning system should prove more lucrative
Location services is one critical piece of our digital lifestyle that hasn&t been completely overwhelmed by advertisements
But it not hard to imagine advertisements popping up within a department store or sports stadium as a user looks for the beauty department
or the closest hotdog, respectively of course.Blippar sees an opportunity to use this for retail and shopping, entertainment and
gamification, tourism, and even design, giving interior designers a chance to check out AR furniture, paint colors, etc.But there also a
huge play here around data
Facebook may know just about everything about you, but the advertising behemoth hasn&t made the most of leveraging a user location
Blippar might stand a chance at doing just that with the new visual positioning system, giving retailers unprecedented information around
the way that customers move through a store.Because the system uses computer vision to determine a user location, the product can be used in
offline mode.Blippar uses blueprints, photography, and 3D models of buildings to build out the visual positioning system, and can turn
around the project almost immediately if they have access to CAD files of the building layout
Adding content, however, takes as long as designers and other project leaders need to figure out what that content should be and how it
should look.Blippar has been through a number of evolutions as a company
The startup first launched as a tool for brands and publishers, laying AR content on top of real-world objects that were tagged with a Blipp
(a little sticker to trigger the AR content).The company then moved into visual search, letting users point their phone at a car or a flower
and learning more about what that real-world object is.That has all laid the foundation for this latest B2B iteration around navigation
Blippar hasn&t yet disclosed the exact cost of using this new product, but did say that it will range between $300K and $1 million
Thus far, the company has signed on two major clients, one retailer and one commercial real estate owner, though Blippar didn&t disclose
which companies it working with.Blippar has raised more than $100 million since launch.
