By Omri Argaman, CMO/CGO, Zoomd
Many who worked in technology marketing in the early 2010s remember the obligatory profile picture wearing Google Glass.
Unfortunately, that profile picture went from must-have to passé very quickly due to the criticism and challenges with Google Glass. As is often the case with emerging technologies, the offering was too early and lacked real-world applications.
Fast forward to 2025, and Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica sold 7 million AR glasses in 2025 versus 2 million in 2023 and 2024 combined. The company recently launched Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses with an electromyography (EMG) wristband, which has satisfied skeptical product reviewers with their usability, interface, and value.
Beyond Meta, Snapchat’s AR lenses are used 8 billion times per day, according to the company, via the 4 million lenses created by 400,000 developers, supporting Snapchat Spectacles. Samsung is partnering with Google on an Android XR platform, working with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster on eyewear, and Alibaba announced the launch of the company’s Quark AI glasses. These developments, coupled with technologies like the forthcoming Apple Glasses, have created an opportunity for the marketing industry to partner with technology companies in the development of AR-based marketing experiences.
Glasses provide a blank canvas for marketing experiences
Though most of these glasses are new or forthcoming, now is the time for the marketing industry to begin developing marketing use cases for the technology. With Meta currently generating 98% of the company’s revenue from advertising, the marketing industry is a natural early partner for glasses technology developers.
Getting in early will enable the technology companies to solidify future revenue streams while providing marketers with beta access to technologies that can empower greater creativity and control for marketers.
I believe that ultimately, there will be multiple glasses manufacturers, like there are multiple mobile phone manufacturers, and that the marketing opportunities will be more open-ended than the current programmatic digital advertising eco-system. The challenge and opportunity for marketers is to implement some standardization to ensure that AR marketing is scalable while incorporating enough openness to maximize creative opportunities across the different AR glasses devices and operating systems.
AR in marketing: more misses than hits
An early AR advertising implementation came from BMW in 2008 through a print ad campaign for the company’s MINI Convertible, which enabled users to scan the magazine ad to see a model of the car.
In 2011, Blippar was founded with the goal of bringing physical objects to life via AR. The company developed a mobile app that enabled users to scan packaging to trigger AR games of other experiences, with an AR game for Cadbury chocolate being an early success for the company. Blippar’s focus on app-based AR, which required users to first download the app or click on the link to engage with the marketing content, proved challenging for the company, once the novelty of the implementations wore off.
Snapchat AR Lenses were also launched in 2011, with sponsored Lenses rolling out in 2014, and evolving into interactive experiences in 2017 that integrate digital content, such as 3D objects and effects, into the user’s real-world surroundings. In 2025, Snapchat offered AI-powered Lenses that use GenAI to analyze faces and integrate users into scenes, allowing users to be transformed and embedded into new environments. Though AR technology enabled Snapchat to break $1 billion in revenue in 2018, this technology hasn’t served as a catalyst that forced other social platforms to offer AR functionality (for advertising or user engagement purposes).
The breakout success of AR technology is the mobile game Pokémon Go. The mobile game, launched in 2016 for iOS and Android devices, uses GPS technology to find, catch, train, and fight Pokémon characters. The game had 232 million active monthly players in 2016, and still has 60 million active monthly players in 2025 – nine years after launching – even after the company was sold in early 2025.
To date, Pokémon Go is the 6th most successful mobile game of all time, generating $9.266 billion in revenue. Though in-app purchases are Pokémon Go’s primary source of revenue, businesses can pay to convert locations into PokéStops or Gyms, a marketing tactic employed by McDonald’s and Starbucks, as well as local businesses. Pokémon developer Niantic also rolled out sponsored balloons, which enabled players to watch ads in exchange for rewards.
Why now?
AR technology is at a tipping point with the launch of new glasses from Snapchat expected in 2026, the forthcoming rollout of glasses powered by Samsung and Google, and the recently launched Ray-Ben and Oakley Meta glasses, coupled with the development of thousands of AR applications in the last decade. We now have hardware and software at a reasonable price point with actual use cases where mass adoption of AR glasses is realistic in the coming years.
Why marketers?
Many in the advertising industry were late to start advertising on social media, letting the social media platforms set their own advertising best practices. At the time, compared to TV and Search Advertising on digital, social media didn’t seem that potentially disruptive, but as always, hindsight vision is 20:20. That’s why I’m calling on the advertising industry to become involved in establishing best practices for marketing on AR glasses.
Furthermore, marketing on AR glasses will be a blank canvas with a broad range of opportunities. I highly doubt that programmatic ads will dominate AR, given the range of opportunities. Instead, I believe marketing via AR glasses will be more experiential, such as virtual fitting rooms or even IKEA’s PLACE app, which lets users insert IKEA furniture into a picture of a room. AR also enables the creation and distribution of interactive catalogues and the creation of virtual tours.
AR glasses will also create new, location-based marketing opportunities for marketers to target users as they pass near a store or restaurant location, or even their competitors’ locations. Games utilizing AR technology should also provide marketers with technology-driven ways to effectively engage and sell to their customers.
With many concerned about job losses due to AI, AR technology has the potential to create new jobs to support the development of AR marketing experiences.
We’re still years from seeing users en masse walking around and engaging with their environments wearing glasses. But now is the time for marketers to work with the technology developers to help standardize the marketing experiences possible with glasses to ensure that AR can finally provide marketers with creative opportunities while generating revenue and engagement for device manufacturers and app developers.
