Unity Technologies Finds That 63% of Creatives Struggle with Implementing AR Advertising

Client and consumer demand is scaling faster than technical
competency, survey reveals

CANNES, France–(BUSINESS WIRE)–To mark the second day of Cannes Lions Advertising Festival of
Creativity 2019, Unity Technologies, the company powering more than 60%
of all AR and VR content and serving more than 11B ads each month, has
today revealed the results of an independent research project on the
state of the Augmented Reality (AR) advertising and marketing market in
2019. Unity surveyed approximately 1000 participants within the
advertising and marketing sectors across the US and UK to gauge a better
understanding of their comfort level, technical competency, enthusiasm
for, and experiences with AR in advertising and marketing.

The survey revealed that technical hurdles are the number one thing
hindering the creation of successful AR campaigns. Moreover, results
suggested that creatives who have worked with an AR campaign cite
technical challenges (24.6%) and cost (39.1%) as the two biggest issues
in considering the campaigns successful.

“Augmented reality is becoming ubiquitous and creative marketers and
advertisers are already establishing the use cases that have made the
rest of the industry pay attention,” said Julie Shumaker, Vice President
of Advertiser Solutions, Unity Technologies. “This survey reveals one
very important thing: there is a disconnect between the growing demand
for AR solutions and the pace at which advertisers, marketers, and
creatives are becoming comfortable with the technology. We need to
improve AR familiarity among creatives — both in terms of technical
competency and highlighting the cost-effective solutions that are
available today.”

The survey unveiled that despite perceived technical shortcomings of AR
and associated high costs of the technology, the demand for AR
activations and experiences continues to rise. Other key findings in the
survey reveal that:

• Technology hinders adoption: Not only do those who have engaged
  in AR campaigns suffer from a technical disparity, but those who
  haven’t engaged in AR activities yet cite a lack of technical
  knowledge (24.1%) and concerns about the potential cost (31%) as
  reasons for their hesitation.
• Demand continues to grow: 80% of creatives believe that AR for
  advertising and marketing is an integral part of their work. The
  results show that the majority of creatives “strive to use it” as part
  of their upcoming projects. Additionally, over half of all respondents
  acknowledged an increased client demand for incorporating AR in
  marketing and advertising campaigns.
• People are ready to adopt: Despite the perceived technical
  challenges, the vast majority of respondents (78.4%) to the survey
  felt positive about AR’s use in advertising, and more than half
  (61.8%) of creatives are seeing an increased client demand for AR
  campaigns. Similarly, more than half of all creatives surveyed (55.8%)
  said they were likely or very likely to consider an AR campaign in the
  next 12 months, and more than half (54.1%) who have already deployed
  an AR campaign were satisfied with user engagement.

As a way to help close this gap, Unity’s real-time 3D creation
technology and workflows arms creators with the tools and resources to
build and deploy AR experiences that have the most impact without the
technical barriers. Announced earlier this year, AR
Foundation is a purpose-built development framework that enables
developers to build AR apps and deploy across both iOS and Android.
Using Unity
as a Library, announced just yesterday, allows brands developing
native Android, iOS, or Windows apps to add AR functionality from Unity
into their existing mobile apps, without rebuilding their apps from
scratch.

To help seamlessly integrate AR into any advertising campaign without
friction, Unity today announces Responsive AR Ads, the first truly
user-first approach to implementing AR in advertising: “AR is arguably
the most powerful storytelling medium ever. Yet, the technological
barriers, the lack of control, and fear of the unknown are hindering its
usage,” said Tony Parisi, Head of AR/VR Ad Innovation, Unity
Technologies. “Responsive AR Ads are a friendlier, less intimidating
approach to implementing AR into campaigns that is tailored to increase
opt-in rates for advertisers while improving user comfort by putting
control in their hands.”

Each Responsive AR Ad begins as a 3D-rendered interactive ad unit that,
after a brief period of familiarization, provides users with the
opportunity to enhance their ad experience with the introduction of AR
components. In providing rich interactive 3D experiences, Responsive AR
Ads help to address concerns for users who don’t opt-in to the AR
component. Rather than relying on a “fallback” experience, Responsive AR
Ads continually provide users with interactive 3D features until the end
of the engagement.

Unity will be located in Cabana Town during Cannes Lions, and will be
available to discuss the survey results at length. To meet with Unity
team members, please contact pr@unity3d.com.

About Unity Technologies

Unity is the creator of the world’s most widely used real-time 3D
development platform, giving developers around the world the tools to
create rich, interactive 2D, 3D, VR and AR experiences. The company’s
1000 person development team keeps Unity at the bleeding edge of
technology by working alongside partners such as Google, Facebook,
Oculus and Microsoft to ensure optimized support for the latest releases
and platforms. Games and experiences made with Unity have reached ~3
billion devices worldwide and were installed more than 29 billion times
in the last 12 months. Unity’s renowned flexibility gives developers the
power to target and optimize their creations for 25+ platforms including
Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Gameroom (Facebook), SteamVR (PC & Mac),
Oculus, PSVR, Gear VR, HoloLens, ARKit (Apple), ARCore (Google) and
more. Unity also offers solutions and services for connecting with
audiences including Unity Ads, Unity Analytics, Unity Asset Store, Unity
Cloud Build, Unity Collaborate, Unity Connect, and Unity Certification.
For more information, visit www.unity.com
and to see the latest games and experiences created in Unity, go to https://unity.com/madewith.

Contacts

Marisa Graves
marisag@unity3d.com
215-801-2485

Lizi Sprague
Lizi@consortpartners.com
415-812-6263