People with human friends can use augmented reality to ask their advice while shopping remotely. But while that’s a popular application, this Ipsos survey finds that Americans generally doubt that AR or the metaverse in general will make their lives better. In fact, most said it was not interesting (39%), a privacy risk (22%), or just hype (20%), while a mere 17% found it exciting and 19% said it would help them learn new things.
FindMine offers hope for the fashion-challenged everywhere, with machine-learning-based advice on pulling together coordinated outfits. Results are based on a combination of sales data, visual content, and marketing inputs, and can be distributed in pretty much any channel. The firm just raised additional funding, bringing total financing to $9.9 million.
Out-of-home advertising is about as far from the metaverse as you can get. It’s no particular surprise that this study from OOH marketplace OneScreen.ai finds 96% of OOH advertisers are happy with their results, that 78% plan increased spending, or that 68% find the buying process is “chaotic”. A bit unexpected: more use traditional OOH (51%) than digital (41%) while just 8% use both.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.