Augmented reality advertising is often based on the technology used in the ad campaign and the way in which viewers are intended to see it. Many of these advertisements are designed to work with smart phones, usually through the inclusion of a particular piece of software or application. Some of these types of augmented reality advertising are meant to reach a new audience for a particular product, while others are designed to keep customers interested in something they already use. There are also advertisements that are designed to function with a computer and webcam, though these are less common.
Most forms of augmented reality advertising require either a smart phone or a computer, as both a camera and a display are used in such ads. The way in which these advertisements are created is through a combination of input devices and software, which and add digital assets to real time images captured by a camera. Within this basic context, however, there are many different types of augmented reality advertising that can be created and used.
Some of the most common types of augmented reality advertising use a smart phone as the primary device for capturing and displaying images. Software is typically available as an application or app that can be downloaded to the phone, and then the phone’s camera can capture images that are used by the app. This type of augmented reality advertising can be used to attract new customers to a product or service, since the approach is often different and unique enough to set the advertised service apart from competitors.
Augmented reality advertising can also be used to maintain customer loyalty, by providing ads that maintain interest in a product. If these types of ads are continually used by a magazine, for example, then subscribers may wish to keep receiving issues of it to see new advertisements. This depends a great deal upon how unique and interesting such companies can make their ads, but with the possibilities available through augmented reality, this is fairly easy to do.
There are also some types of augmented reality advertising that are primarily intended for people on computers, rather than those using smart phones. Rather than using the camera and screen on a phone, these ads use a webcam and the monitor of a computer. While such advertisements lack the portability of those using a smart phone, these can be larger in scale due to the increased processing power of computers. It is also easier to include the user in these ads, since a webcam can allow the augmented reality to be created around the person.