Blippar: A Visual Discovery App

Blippar is a visual discovery app that relies on the use of augmented reality and machine learning to bring the physical world to life through smartphones and wearables. Once users download the app, they can ‘blipp’ or scan objects they are curious about and unlock content.

Blippar was launched in the UK in 2011 and soon caught the attention of the business and financial worlds. It was ranked 9th on CNBCs Top Disrupter List and it also made it ot Bloomberg’s list of top UK Business Innovators in January 2016.

Blippar Redesigns Its App With A Focus On Discovery

Blippar has recently unveiled a redesigned version of the app that now focuses on discovery. Blippar’s visual search tool can recognize hundreds of millions of items, at least on a category level. And while some of these items are broadly recognized, other items can get hyper-specific.

What makes visual search different from the traditional searches users can do on Google and other search engines is that visual search is based around curiosity.

With the newly redesigned Blippar, the app now comes with an inbuilt layer on top of that initial search to let users keep learning through discovery and curiosity.

How Does Blipp Visual Search Work?

Whenever you pull up a Blippable item, the app’s interface with spread to a web of bubbles, each with some relation to the original Blipp. Users can click around within this web to see various items relation to one another or scroll down to get more in-depth information on a single subject. Users can spend quite a lot of time clicking around from one Blipp to the next, just inspired by their curiosity.

How Does Blippar Compare to Google Image Search?

Blippar puts itself right in the micro moments sphere and by allowing users to interact with the objects around them it opens the opportunity for new marketing avenues.

The big difference between Blippar and Google is the ability Blippar gives to push people towards searches of note. For example, a B2B software product catalogue can include ‘Blipps’ that a line manager, or decision maker can follow to discover information and insight to a new service, whereas a Google user might have a prompt, eg. ‘search B2B SEO agency for more information’. This is then a manual search.

From a mass market angle Blippar could offer something more, it could unlock the ability to interact with fashion trends, brands and new product releases in order to gain additional feedback on products, run competitions or even purchase.

In terms of micro moment stages, Blippar offers greater targeting for those further down the line in buying or further research phases.

POLARIS is a Digital PR agency, for a free audit contact info@polarisagency.co.uk

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