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Industry rhetoric about AR’s world-changing status sometimes outweighs evidence that it’s captivating consumers today. Though we see some signals, such as lens engagement figures from social AR players, we’re often flying blind when it comes to consumer AR sentiment.
Looking to fill that gap, AR Insider’s research arm ARtillery Intelligence has completed Wave 8 of its annual consumer survey report. Working with consumer survey specialist Thrive Analytics, it wrote questions to be fielded to 52,000+ U.S. adults and produced a report based on the results.
Among the topics: How is mobile AR resonating with everyday consumers? How often are they using it? How satisfied are they? What types of experiences do they like most? How much are they willing to pay for it? And for those who aren’t interested in mobile AR….why not?
After the last installment of this series looked at AR’s overall penetration, adoption, and user demographics, we now move on to another area: mobile formats and access points. How are consumers finding and consuming AR? Apps? Mobile web? In-app features?
Optimal Vessel
Starting at the top, popular access points for mobile AR include ARCore apps (53 percent of users) and ARkit apps (46 percent of users). Given that these AR developer kits from Apple and Google have a platform advantage in capturing users and creators, this isn’t surprising.
But more interesting is what lies beyond these platforms. As we’ve examined in past analyses, native apps aren’t always the best vessel for AR given download friction. That leaves two formats seen in these survey results – one that’s already outperforming and one that holds potential.
The outperforming format is AR-as-a-feature (ARaaF) which received the most responses at 56 percent. This format lowers adoption barriers by planting AR within popular apps. In fact, the most-used AR experiences to date – such as Snapchat Lenses – represent ARaaF.
The “holds potential” area is web AR. These are AR experiences delivered in the mobile browser. Because AR is early and unproven, consumers don’t typically go through the typical friction of downloading apps. Web AR is conversely activated with just a link (or QR code).
Web AR still has quality and capability deficiencies compared to native apps, but that’s quickly changing due to the work of innovators like Niantic’s 8th Wall platform. Another web AR benefit is scale: Developers can reach a wider audience and users can avoid compatibility issues.
Readily Available
A related data point in this consumer AR survey is users’ experience and tenure with AR. Now that AR has been readily available in consumer markets for about nine years – marked by the 2015 availability of lenses on Snapchat – it’s no longer a new technology to many consumers.
The largest group of AR users in this survey (36 percent) has been engaged for 3-4 years. That’s followed by a 1-2 year tenure (33 percent) and less than one year (16 percent). Other groupings include 5-6 years (10 percent) and the smallest subset, 6+ years, at 5 percent.
Unpacking these findings, they align with our observations of the AR market over the past several years. Specifically, the technology started to gain traction in the past five years. That aligned with the rise of free developer platforms from Snap (Lens Studio), and TikTok (Effect House).
These platforms were made free by social players as loss leaders to drive downstream spending by brand marketers to amplify their AR creations. In fact, brand marketing is one of the top spending categories tracked in ARtillery Intelligence’s separate AR market sizing.
But the result, as it relates to AR usage, is that more content was engendered by these free platforms. Creators ran with the tools, which in turn scaled the AR lens availability. The ultimate result is more adoption and AR exposure in the past four years, as the survey validates.
We’ll pause there and pick things up in the next installment with more consumer survey results and insights…
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