LAS VEGAS: Augmented reality should be the technology on which marketers place the highest priority coming out of CES, according to Shelly Palmer, CEO of The Palmer Group, a strategic advisory and creative-services firm.

Palmer, who has helped businesses cut through the noise at the Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) annual event for over two decades, assessed the various “buzzwords” that took “center stage” in 2018.

And he suggested that augmented reality, which overlays digital components onto real-world settings via smartphones and similar devices, requires immediate attention.

“This actually is world-changing,” Palmer explained during a session hosted by Scripps Networks. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: A CES bullshit detector: What tech trends really matter.)

“And, of all the things that are happening here that you can really sink your teeth into, [and] that you can really make actionable, getting a strategy together for augmented reality should be the very top of your list.”

Pokémon GO!, the mobile game, is the best-known example of AR, but marketers from Office Depot to General Motors and Danone have all experimented with this technology.

Palmer predicted that the advance of stereoscopic tools – which are able to mimic human vision – and increasingly powerful chips will ensure that AR continues to develop at a rapid clip.

“All of the phones that are out there now have some AR capability,” he said. “With the network speeds that are planned in the next 24 or 36 months, you’re going to be able to do a really good job with rudimentary AR.”

More specifically, he argued that the impact of this technology would be felt across many aspects of the marketing universe.

“It’s going to bring all kinds of things to your media world: New advertising real estate, new experiential capabilities, new entertainment form factors,” he said.

Building on this theme, Palmer reported that enterprises should urgently begin exploring this terrain if they have not done so already.

“If you don’t have an AR strategy after CES, you really will probably have missed the point of what’s going on at this show,” Palmer said.

Sourced from WARC