Realty in Augmented Reality
If you thought this article would be about architecture and how architectural models could be brought up in the world of Augmented Reality (AR)…LEAVE NOW! ESCAPE! This article is about how value of real estates and advertisements could change once AR spaces become relevant.
Recent AR devices have the capability of mapping spaces and put it in a cloud server. This would mean you can keep a virtual object at a particular location and it would remain in that position as long as the software which created it survives. ie. you could hide a virtual bottle of wine in your closet and it will remain there forever. If a person from the other side of the earth comes and looks for it, it would be at the exact same place you kept it. This would give rise to the idea of position-specific assets.
When it comes to the field of advertising, this would mean a lot. Imagine different spaces having virtual ads fixed in place. Since these are virtual ads, these could be anything from animated to interactive. Compared to the medium of prints, billboards and huge displays, virtual ads would not require any tangible installation in place. These could float over any predefined space.
When the Pokemon Go revolution came into place, people started crowding around particular areas in real world (the Gyms and Pokestops). There were also incidents where people encroached into other’s property without consent. People crowding around a particular area could be beneficial (for businesses) and problematic (for private areas), but should be regulated nevertheless. This regulation would mean determining areas around properties which would be under the ownership of the property owners. This would not be just landspace, but airspace (till a particular height above the property) as well.
The “Virtual ownership volume” around a property would in turn determine how any digital asset, advertisement or not would be placed.
In a previous article I mentioned a World Wide Web in the AR space (the AW3), which is essentially the web extended into the augmented world, except that this time, we would have literal sites instead of websites. The AW3 would have 3 layers of access- the public, group or private. Considering the ownership of a property and its virtual ownership volume, it would be up to the owner of the property to dedicate his/her virtual space for displaying virtual assets. If the owner denies the space for display, the area would be blocked and would remain inaccessible. This also provides a platform for the owner to determine the price of giving access to his property. This, would in turn create a new parameter in determining real estate prices. Digital points of interest around an area would increase the amount of people gathering around the area, which could be utilized by businesses. On the other hand, private owners could benefit from selling access to their spaces.
Another way the real estate prices would increase would be the engagement of content provided within the space. This would in turn create a new market in which engaging and unique virtual experiences could be provided. For example, a shop owner could create a unique portal to a game world which could be experienced only if the user comes to his shop. Thus the property value would increase based on the virtual experiences it provides. Such virtual experiences themselves could be a revenue generation system which again would come with the property if the owner so chooses.
Thus, what we see is a global change in prices of real estate based on digital content availability, and the creation of new market spaces like digital space renting, digital content creation and point of interest generation. An advertisement to be published, would have to pay for a space to publish it. The amount paid would go to the owner of the space as well as the provider of the AR platform. Imagine Facebook as a platform encasing the digital assets published in different locations. Thus, Facebook as well as the owner would get a share of the ad revenue. In particular, such a platform would be one of the biggest success stories in the future. Because, a platform which could provide mediated custom content publication would then have control over the AW3 and the Lion’s share of the AR market.
The question is… would such a platform be private or would it be public?
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