In Part 1 of this series, we took a look at the past and present of AR and the fact that its future seems to be perpetually around the corner. There are several practical and technical hurdles that make the technology easier to execute than it is to dream. And the AR sector has done its fair share of dreaming over the past decade.
After looking at some of those challenges and outcomes, we continue the analysis in part 2 with the business case, as well as ethical considerations and potential paths forward. Let’s dive back in…
Monetization: The Elephant in Every Room
Let’s talk about the part no one wants to lead with—but everyone needs to solve: how the hell do you make money with wearable AR?
The production costs aren’t small. Spatial mapping, LIDAR scans, motion capture, real-time rendering, custom interactions—it’s a pipeline that looks more like a film studio than a game dev team. But users? They’re not exactly lining up to drop $60 on an AR experience, especially when they don’t know what to expect.
This mismatch between cost and perceived value is the biggest commercial risk for the industry right now. Mobile games can bank on skins and loot boxes. Streaming services thrive on binge models. But AR—especially in wearable, spatial form—needs an entirely different economic engine.
“You’re not selling a download. You’re selling a moment,” says Vladislav Polikarpov. “That means the business model can’t be transactional. It has to be experiential.”
Black Snow isn’t following the tired monetization playbook of mobile gaming—aggressive ads, manipulative mechanics, or grinding for skins. While the rest of the industry struggles to find viable user acquisition channels, Black Snow is flipping the model entirely: what if players were driven by tangible rewards, not digital dopamine?
“When we tested AR at live events,” Polikarpov explains, “we saw people instinctively reach out, trying to touch the experience—as if it were physically there. That changed everything for us. If the game feels real, the reward should be real too.”
That insight led to a new model: loyalty-driven monetization. In a pilot at Mall of the Emirates, the entire venue became a gamified playground. Visitors who spent a minimum amount at partner stores received an access code to play. The app guided them to explore the mall, discover hidden experiences, and collect points. At the end? Real prizes from brand sponsors.
The results? 70% conversion from installs to active spenders. Sessions ran 4–6 hours. Players returned just to chase more real-world rewards.
A follow-up demo version using the same concept saw 30-minute to 1-hour sessions, with strong re-engagement. The formula was simple: immersive AR + real rewards = sticky, scalable engagement.
Now, Black Snow is doubling down on this approach—building game loops where users earn loyalty points, not in-game fluff. These points can unlock tangible experiences, prizes, or perks in the physical world. It’s a monetization system built on desire, not disruption.
“You can’t import banner ads into someone’s face,” says Polikarpov. “AR needs a value exchange that feels magical. If a brand helps you experience something unforgettable, that is the ad.”
This perspective reframes the conversation: ads as experiences, not interruptions. AR isn’t about catching eyeballs—it’s about creating belonging in a place and time. That’s a shift that requires brands to stop acting like advertisers and start acting like producers.
And those who figure it out first? They’ll win a kind of brand loyalty that mobile never could touch—because it won’t feel like marketing. It’ll feel like magic.
The Privacy and Ethics Pitfall
For all its promise, wearable AR carries one shadow that can’t be debugged or patched: the ethical risk of blending surveillance with reality.
When you’re wearing glasses that see, track, annotate, and possibly record everything around you, you’re not just interacting with a digital layer—you’re reshaping the rules of physical space. And that changes the social contract.
“You’re not holding up a phone anymore,” says Vladislav Polikarpov. “You’re capturing people just by existing near them. That’s not a tech challenge—it’s a trust challenge.”
This isn’t theoretical. Remember Google Glass? It didn’t fail because the tech was broken—it failed because society rejected it. “Glassholes” became a meme because people didn’t want to be involuntary extras in someone else’s digital feed. Wearable AR brings that dilemma back, only now with more advanced sensors, higher fidelity, and AI that can recognize faces, behaviors, even emotions.
Without clear boundaries, every sidewalk becomes a potential data minefield.
Black Snow’s approach to ethics starts with a core principle: AR should feel like wonder, not surveillance. Instead of relying on hardware features like built-in indicators, the company bakes transparency into the user flow itself: visible cues, clear onboarding, and a strict focus on shared, physical environments. The idea is simple—AR should never make people feel watched. It should make them feel invited. As Polikarpov puts it, “If people don’t know when they’re part of an experience, we’ve already failed.”
Other companies are exploring ways to make AR experiences more transparent. Tilt Five, for example, limits gameplay to shared, physical boards, ensuring all participants are fully aware when AR is active. Their system is inherently collaborative and localized, which naturally minimizes the risk of unintentional capture or covert use. Meanwhile, XREAL’s glasses are designed primarily for private viewing, with features like screen mirroring via the Beam accessory, allowing users to stream content from their devices into their glasses. While not built explicitly for transparency, these features help keep AR use visible and grounded in personal space. These are good starts, but they’re not enough.
Legislation will come—GDPR for AR is inevitable. Until then, the onus falls on builders to self-regulate.
That means:
- Visual indicators when recording or mapping is live
- Data stored locally or anonymized at the edge
- Explicit opt-ins for shared spaces
- No facial recognition without very good reasons and real safeguards
Because if the public starts to feel like they’re being watched instead of welcomed, AR won’t scale—it’ll crash.
Ethics isn’t a side note in AR—it’s the main event. Any platform that ignores this will face backlash far bigger than any app store rejection or social media cancellation. The stakes aren’t digital anymore—they’re human.
The Path Forward: Think Smaller to Scale Bigger
It’s easy to look at wearable AR and assume the breakthrough will come from a giant. Apple. Meta. Google. The next “iPhone moment” of spatial computing. But history—and reality—say otherwise.
The most meaningful shifts in emerging tech don’t usually come from the incumbents. They come from the fast, weird, and hungry mid-tier players who understand human behavior better than any keynote presentation ever could. And in wearable AR, that’s exactly who’s leading.
“Everyone’s waiting for a polished, billion-dollar headset to change the game,” says Vladislav Polikarpov. “But the real AR revolution is happening in parks, at festivals, on factory floors. It’s not a product launch—it’s a slow invasion of reality.”
Take ThirdEye. Instead of chasing flashy consumer markets, they’re targeting field workers—utilities, logistics, healthcare—where AR solves real problems like hands-free diagnostics and equipment overlays. Their X2 MR Glasses are rugged, certified, and actively deployed in dozens of industries.
Take Tilt Five, whose tabletop gaming platform doesn’t pretend to be a universal solution. It’s intentionally niche—and that’s why it works. They’re building deep loyalty with a growing audience that doesn’t want metaverses. They want magic they can share across a dinner table.
And then there’s Black Snow, whose outdoor AR platform blends cinematic storytelling with geospatial design. Their approach is part theater, part game engine, part place-making tool. Instead of trying to dominate the whole map, they’re curating specific, high-impact locations and building emotional resonance on top of them.
“We don’t need 100 million users to succeed,” Polikarpov explains. “We need one unforgettable moment, repeated in a thousand cities. That’s how you scale AR—not by going bigger, but by going deeper.”
That’s the secret no one tells you about wearable AR: the tech isn’t what changes the world. The experiences do. And those don’t require billion-dollar moonshots. They require empathy, creativity, and the guts to design for the messiness of real life.
Because wearable AR isn’t a future to be unlocked by a single product. It’s a future already being prototyped—quietly, cleverly—by the builders who know that the best tech doesn’t look like tech at all.
Final Thought
The future of wearable AR isn’t about headsets or hand gestures. It’s about making reality better without getting in the way. The winners won’t be the ones who create the most advanced hardware or the flashiest visuals. They’ll be the ones who disappear into the experience, who make you forget there was ever a barrier between you and the moment.
“We don’t want to add more screens to your life,” Polikarpov says. “We want to get out of the way—and make reality unforgettable while we’re at it.”
Mykola Oliiarnyk is a writer who covers XR and other emerging tech.
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