Category: Mobile Marketing

Augmented reality based Star Wars tease issued by Project Tango

Google’s new video offered a mixed-reality style environment to bring digital and physical objects together.

Trixi Studios recently released a video that brought the new BB-8 Star Wars droid into a fun new augmented reality based environment in which digital objects were brought into the physical environment.

This experience was meant to provide Star Wars fans with a fun glimpse into what AR technology can do.

Despite the fact that Project Tango at Google and Hololens from Microsoft are both considered to be in the early phases of development, they are both working at full tilt to try to make the augmented reality experience more broadly available. Some of the recent releases have include the Hololens development kit from Microsoft that comes with a price tag of $3,000, while the development kit from Project Tango is a notably more affordable $512. The release of the Star Wars simulation was only one of a range of AR technology based teasers that have been released over YouTube in recent weeks.

There have also been several other players that have been strutting their augmented reality stuff.

Among them was the rather mysterious Magic Leap, which has been quite secretive about what it’s been up to. That said, it didn’t hold off releasing its own AR technology based video recently. With each new release, it becomes more clear that the tech has quite a bit to offer in terms of a unique and fascinating experience for users.

When it comes to the more recent Star Wars video, while the BB-8 droid was featured, it wasn’t the only character that made its way into the spotlight. In fact, there were several character interactions available as the creator of the video made it possible to provide digital representations of Boba Fett and Stormtroopers to be fought off.

While it is clear in the videos that the animations remain in earlier forms, the point wasn’t to show how accurate and detailed the animations could be. Instead, it was a fascinating demonstration of the type of features augmented reality could have to offer. The fact that top Star Wars characters were brought into the mix showed that there is some meaningful potential on the fun side of the spectrum.

Intent in mobile marketing more important than demographics, says Google

This insight was provided in a blog post by the tech giant, which was clearly a shot at Facebook’s advertising strategies.

When it comes to mobile marketing, the biggest players have made serious efforts to try to grasp at the top spot and keep it and Google has now released a blog post that reveals some of its latest efforts to create the most appeal for its offerings.

Facebook has a natural advantage when it comes to mobile advertising to specific targeted demographics.

That said, Google has been underscoring its own consumer intent data when it comes to searches in order to provide companies with what it calls better data for mobile marketing to targeted consumers. It has stated that this is particularly helpful in the mobile advertising sphere, though it is beneficial to all online marketing. It supported its perspective by saying that demographic data develops a form of pre-conceived form of targeting for advertising campaigns.

Google gave examples of how that style could end up skewing mobile marketing results.

Mobile Marketing ImportanceFor instance, it said that among sporting goods searchers over the last half year, 56 percent are female. Equally, 45 percent of home improvement searchers are also female. On the other hand, 68 percent of influencers in the skin and body care sector are male.

The blog post stated that “Intent beats identity. Immediacy trumps loyalty. When someone has a want or need, they turn to their smartphone for help,” adding that “When a need arises, people turn to search and YouTube to look for answers, discover new things, and make decisions. We call these intent-filled moments, micro-moments.”

For this reason, the blog post explained that mobile marketing firms have the best opportunity to reach people if they’re there during that specific moment that an individual is actually seeking to learn about a subject. Understanding the intent of consumers and providing content that meets those needs, said Google, was at the heart of being able to convince them to take action such as subscribing or making a purchase. Therefore, Google said that while designing targeted campaigns, regardless of the channel, intent should play the primary role over demographics and first-party data.