ARtillery Intelligence’s latest report, Lessons from AR Revenue Leaders, Part II: Niantic examines AR usage and revenue leaders, and the strategic implications for AR success. Subscribe for the full report. VRARA members get a discount.
The consumer AR sector still lingers in early stages. Among other things, this means the playbook is being written mid-flight. There’s a great deal of experimentation underway as companies test and iterate rapidly to discover winning formulas and business models.
This goes for consumer AR product strategies. Though a common sentiment in 2016’s hype cycle was that AR applies to everything, it’s become clear that it’s not a silver bullet. It will have native and natural applicability to some aspects of our lives and work… but not all.
Beyond macro-categories and use cases where AR should or shouldn’t be developed, there are more granular strategies around user experience (UX). What types of AR interactions resonate with consumers? And what best practices are being standardized for experience and interface design?
Equally important is the question of AR monetization and revenue models. Just as user experience is being refined, questions over what consumers will and won’t pay for are likewise being discovered. The same goes for brand spending behavior in cases of sponsored AR experiences or ads.
These lingering questions compel acute attention to quantifiable AR market successes and best practices. Not only does the sector’s early stages mean that these questions are prevalent… but also that their answers are scarce. That includes evidence of successful execution, as well as transferrable lessons.
With that backdrop, ARtillery Intelligence ventures to find, aggregate and draw meaning from finite AR successes in today’s environment. And by “success,” we mean large-scale consumer traction and revenue. When examining consumer AR engagement and revenue leaders, what product attributes and tactics are driving their performance?
This includes Snapchat. Its social lenses have the greatest consumer AR active usage, and it holds the leading share of AR ad revenue. Among other things, this is propelled by product-market fit, ease of use, distribution and fulfilling key goals for brand advertisers.
Also on the list is Pokémon Go. Though the tech press has moved on to other shiny things, 2019 marks its best revenue performance to date. This is attributed to innovation cycles that breed ongoing novelty and replayability, as well as its sparing use of AR as a game element.
Other consumer AR exemplars include Houzz and Instagram. Emerging AR players also show early signs of traction that’s worth examining, such as Tilt Five. Altogether, how do we triangulate best practices and extract tactics and takeaways for AR players today?
We’ll do just that in the coming pages, continuing from Part I in which we examined Snapchat. We now pick up the discussion with Niantic and its flagship, Pokémon Go. This draws from the rigor of market watching and analyst work. We’ll synthesize these findings, pursuant to the core mission of empowering you with a knowledge position.
Subscribe for the full report. VRARA members get a discount.
