There aren’t many times that I watch an advertisement and am truly so interested in it that I do exactly what marketers all over are hoping for: I start spreading the word of mouth buzz about the product. One exception to this would definitely be Google’s “Project Glass” promoting their new Google glasses. I showed the ad to my friends, my relatives and weirdly enough even the woman that I nanny for. The first time I saw the advertisement for these glasses was actually in one of my classes at Virginia Tech, and my entire class was so perplexed that the rest of our class time was spent on discussing the influence these glasses would have on socialization. Would people really have no purpose to communicate with others now that every need or question they had could be answered through their eyes? One aspect of the glasses that I did not even consider yet was the new potential for advertising.
An article in Forbes called “Don’t Kid Yourself–Project Glass Will Produce An Advertising Bonanza For Google” stated that Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, was very clear that the glasses had no plans for ads. Although this is the tentative plan regarding advertising, the potential that these glasses have for marketers is endless, which could make Google filthy rich. The article describes why advertising would be so perfect for these glasses:
- “Google will now know what you’re likely to want next–right here, right now.” (This pretty much means that the glasses can see exactly what you are looking at in a store, and they can give you feedback regarding the price, alternative products etc.)
- “Seamless voice search could connect consumers with products even faster.” (Right before people are about to purchase an item they can ask a question out loud and immediately get a response, rather than typing words into Google. This could be the closest advertising medium to the actual action of buying.)
- “Glass could finally provide a way to measure the impact of online ads on in-store sales.” (Advertisers could see that a person looked at an ad and then behaved in a certain way due to that ad, because the glasses see everything that you do. This could let marketers know what ads are successful and if mobile advertising is truly as profitable as people think it is.)
- “Google could run ads on Glass devices–yes, despite what Brin said.” (It could be very dangerous to clutter someone’s vision with ads, so they could run voice ads just like the radio depending on what a person is looking at or what they are near.)
The potential advertising benefits to the Google glasses are very clear, but I also think that it is slightly too invasive. I would not want marketers to be able to track every single product that I look at or to constantly find a way to advertise to me when I might just want some peace and quiet while shopping or walking around. Privacy might be a major legal barrier that Goggle will face if they do decide to ultimately allow some forms of advertising. Project Glass has some fine-tuning to do before they are a truly successful product, but I would say that they are well on their way to the future of innovation.
Sources:
laurenlattanzio 