Report From SMX West: An Overview Of Augmented Reality Mobile Apps

I was sitting in the mobile app panel at SMX West when the subject turned to “augmented reality.” Some great live blogging of the presentation by Cindy Krum is on her RankMobile site.

Augmented reality is basically presenting some kind of digital overlay on top of a view of the “real world.” Think about what the Terminator sees when he looks at you and sizes you up for the kill, or perhaps tries to sell you a Coca-Cola.

Current examples include:

• Google Maps’ Street View for Mobile: Hold up your phone and via geolocation, you get Google Maps info for wherever you point it.
• WikiTude: Uses the camera on your phone and brings up a Wikipedia entry for whatever you are viewing through your phone.
• Layar: An aggregator of real time information displayed on top of whatever is in your mobile phone camera<.>
• Gunman: An iPhone app that allows you to virtually shoot other people.
• AcrossAir: Find the nearest subway in NYC.
• WhereMark: Allows users to “augment” reality by splicing information and the real world. It is a quick reference tool and a travel companion that will find users their next meal, get them to the nearest subway, lead them to a museum and remember where their cars are parked.
• Yell: Find the tube and some good ale near you in the UK.
• Zagat To Go: Food in your phone.

Key takeaways for understanding augmented reality for marketing: Augmented reality is based on some kind of location-based tagging or meta data, so to show up in an augmented reality app you need to tag your data. And augmented reality can provide a closed loop between online & offline by directly connecting your business with customers where they are.

Augmented reality’s biggest potential winners

• Local shops
• Social networks
• Travel
• Real estate
• Restaurants
• Malls

How can you participate in this new approach? Seek out apps that reach your audience then figure out how they get results. Four common methods include direct pull of data, a daisy chain (e.g. aggregators of aggregators), paid submission/placement and free submission.

It’s important to optimize all of your feeds and make them as easy to parse as possible. Use standards like:

• Hcards
• Vcards
• VCal

Site maps are also helpful. The original sitemap standards live are XML site maps. For video, mRSSis emerging as a standard. Google Webmaster Central also explains how to create Video site maps and News site maps.

Augmented reality offers some key benefits to marketers, including the fact that application behavior is trackable, purchase behavior can be seen in context, making it easier to analyze conversion triggers, which is turn helps us better understand post-conversion behavior.

I think this area is going to be the biggest source of opportunity in the mid-to-long term.