‘Interactive Technologies Can Bring Alive Ooh Essence'

Thapas Joseph, President of Fountainhead Digital MKTG talks about the myriad OOH opportunities that will come by with the use of extended technologies. Edited excerpts.

- Bhawana Anand & Pray Jani

AR, VR technology has been in the market for quite some time but it has picked up only recently. Why has it taken this long?

There are three technologies in extended reality i.e. Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality and the oldest is Virtual Reality because principally VR started with games where the user gets immersed in a space. AR started much later that essentially needed to have a lens to view the content and it started with the smartphone revolution. And third MR, is when both AR & VR come together. So in essence AR is about augmenting your space, VR is about being immersed completely in a virtual environment and MR is a combination of both.

It took time because there were some hurdles in ensuring that these technologies can deliver an optimal user experience. For instance, in the case of AR, the challenge is that it requires one to download an app to make it work. That means, for any marketing campaign, you need to download an app that would also mean heavy graphics and heavy files. Therefore, the process of getting the user to experience wasn’t seamless. However, recently when Apple and Google started to promote technology a real change has come about in its use. Likewise, Amazon has come into the VR space. Indeed, it has really made the change. Till now these technologies were giving interrupted experience where you need to browse or experience with wearables but now Google and Apple are intending to provide this experience via smartphones. Currently, we are on the cusp of this change.