Immersive Interview with David Ripert
David Ripert is former Head of YouTube Spaces in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at Google. Now he is building an augmented reality marketplace.
You are the founder of the augmented reality marketplace Poplar. Can you explain what it is?
Poplar is an Augmented Reality marketplace incubated within Founders Factory in London (backed by L’Oréal, the Guardian and easyJet).
Poplar makes AR content creation simple. We are activating a new generation of talented creators to produce amazing AR content on behalf of brands, faster and cheaper than an agency. We put out a brief on the platform that AR creators can apply to. They submit concepts and the brand can select the ones they want to put to production. Poplar cuts the whole AR content creation process from 6–8 weeks to 2–3 weeks and the cost from $100K+ to $4–8K per project only! The final AR experience can be delivered into social platforms, branded apps, browsers and in the future eyewear.
Don’t you feel that other platforms for freelancers are your competitors?
Our differentiator is that we are exclusively focused on 3D and AR developers at the moment- from recent game development university graduates all the way to small studio teams. At our core is our community and our brief process- we don’t only provide access to a freelancer; rather we allow a brand to post a brief for an AR project they want produced, and for passionate AR creators to respond to it, with storyboards, sketches, wireframes etc. We also provide training and community tools, so that creators can interact and learn from us and each other. And we have the unfair advantage of having access to top brands thanks to our partnership with Founders Factory.
What is your current growth? Can you give us some numbers?
We have just opened the platform in July and already have huge clients including Universal Music, King Games, Warner Bros, YSL, L’Oréal Paris and Sony Music, among others. We have 200+ 3D and AR creators registered from all over the World and plan on growing that to 1000 by the end of September. And we work very closely with the top AR distribution platforms out there.
Can you give an example of specific briefs that designers can find on Poplar?
We’ve had more than 11 briefs already published on the platform in the past month — one of them was for Big Shaq, on behalf of Universal Music. People can try the dual-camera filter Man Don’t Dance (face filter + World AR). It’s reached 2M+ fully organic impressions on Facebook and at a low 4 figures production cost, represents a competitive CPM vs other types of media including video.
Are AR designers in demand? Isn’t this field too small or overcrowded?
We’re seeing great demand, both from creators looking to upskill and monetise their skills, as well as brands looking to scale up their AR content creation, with distribution ranging from social media platforms to apps and browsers. Brand marketers recognise the engagement that AR provides and with the rapid release of new features and formats by the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, Google and Apple, among others, we get more and more insights and performance. Proving that AR is the biggest advertising opportunity since video ads, with an average dwell time of 75s and 4x longer view time than video.
What is a typical background of designers that are working on Poplar?
Our community of creators on Poplar includes 3D designers and modelers, AR app developers and AR social format developers. They use 3D software (Maya, Blender, C4D, etc.) to build their models, which they can import into AR studios like Facebook’s or Snapchat’s, in order to deliver experiences with plane tracking (body, gesture, image, etc). Most have experience with Unity, which represents 70% of the AR apps out there. If they have experience with social media AR formats, they’ve usually built front camera face filters (2D/3D), or rear camera World AR, image trackers or portals- a very popular format with brands on Poplar.
How did you come up with an idea to make Poplar?
At the moment, there’s no cost-effective, quick and scalable way for brands to produce AR content in-house. Brands rely on agencies and studios that charge $100K+ and take 6–8 weeks. Producing AR requires multiple stakeholders and results in a complex workflow. It requires specialist teams of 3D artists and engineers. It’s just not scalable for brands and remains a slow experimental process for brands and platforms.
Poplar solves of all that complexity by matching creators who know how to produce amazing AR experiences, with brands wanting to produce them, faster and cheaper that with an agency.
Poplar came about from my passion for content creation, my expertise in community building and my belief in AR’s potential to change the World.
You worked at Google for a long time before. What were you working on?
I was the Head of YouTube Spaces in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at Google for the previous 6 years. I was launching creator-facing studios all over the region and providing training and monetisation opportunities to video creators.
So I saw a similar opportunity in AR and want to foster a virtuous AR ecosystem.
What other activities or initiatives do you enjoy besides building poplar?
I have over 16 years’ international leadership experience within Fortune 500 & start-ups like Google, YouTube, Netflix, Dailymotion and Cap Gemini E&Y. I’m also on the board of several major charities incl Save the Children (Inc. $550M) and Sadler’s Wells (Inc. $30M) and i’m an investor and advisor in media/tech.
It sounds spectacular!
Good luck with Poplar, and thank you for your time!
This story is part of series Immersive Interviews. If you are also VR/AR designer, and you have what to say (I’m sure that you have) drop me a line on email or Twitter. Check out the previous interview from this series:
