Weekly News: Facebook Tech
AR-smart glasses, cool or creepy? Your choice.
When talking about high-tech glasses, we can’t help but think about Tony Stark and his highly advanced sunglasses. While the function is nowhere near ordering drone attack, but Facebook is reportedly developing its verARsion of AR-powered smart-glasses to replace your phone, according to DigitalTrends.
Partnering with Ray-Ban’s parent company, Facebook introduces Orion, its version of smart-glasses that would be equipped with an AI-voice assistant, that enable users to take phone calls, show information via small display in the frames, as well as allowing users to livestream what they see to their social media followers.
The Orion glasses are supposedly expected to hit the market between 2023 and 2025.
What does it mean for marketing?
Over the past few years, we have seen that voice-search technology has been taking off in a meaningful way and slowly impact the way we do marketing. Likewise, we believe the development of a more sophisticated augmented reality technology will directly impact visual search.
It’s not even surprising to say that the future of visual search might go hand-in-hand with the rise of smart-glasses and other AR-driven gadgets.
Smart-glasses: Yay or Nay?
Smart-glasses or AR-glasses have been associated with expensive flops (remember, Google Glass?). Following that, Snapchat’s Spectacles, designed to record video clips to be shared on Snapchat, are still not able to commercially break into the market.
Honestly, smart-glasses technology is extremely crafty. Imagine, you have to combine seamless functionality with attractive design that makes people feel comfortable to use them as part of their daily wear. Still, we believe in the potential of these AR-equipped glasses.
Humans are highly visual. From the rise of Instagram to Pinterest, it’s clear that when it comes to the quality of perceptive experience, there’s nothing better than visuals. Even in voice-activated devices, such as Amazon Echo Show, users are still equipped with screens to interact with.
While voice interfaces definitely have their own strengths, as displayed in a variety of smart-home appliances, but when it comes to activities that require a screen, i.e. shopping or reading emails, smart-glasses are certainly a much more natural fit.
Smart-glasses boosts Visual Search and AR
Smart glasses has immense potential for monetisation. This is because smart glasses encourages visual search, and visual search is the most intuitive way to search for things that you’d like to buy or things you’d like to buy to go with things you already own.
We have seen such similar technology from Pinterest, who introduces visual recognition technology to its ad targeting back in 2017. This capability means that businesses who advertise with Pinterest will see their products surfaced as Related Pins or Instant Ideas when a user searches for a visually similar item.
Additionally, augmented reality technology enhances visual search even further. IKEA is among the first few that developed tools that use augmented reality to place furniture within your home, so you can visualise it before making a purchase. Add visual search into the equation, and you might be able to ‘search’ your living room to find the perfect coffee table to match your sofa, or a pair of curtains to match your rug; visualise them within the space; and then buy them directly.
Meanwhile, modern customers are definitely hungry for the rise of visual search in e-commerce. In fact, 62% of Millennial and Generation Z shoppers claim visual search as their favorite up-and-coming digital trends to help them find and identify products that they were inspired by before buying.
Our Thoughts
Viral Access believes that smart glasses are still in its infancy when it comes to being commercially viable. However, we also think that this technology will eventually come to terms with mainstream society, thus enabling us to seamlessly search for information and open up new possibilities on how we interact with the internet.
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