Mobile innovation is on a tear with no sign of slowing down in the coming months or years. One of the most intriguing uses is image recognition. A user can take a picture of an object with the mobile device and have that object indentified as well as get search results or other information about the object. The use cases are virtually unlimited and present marketers with a tremendous opportunity for environmental branding.
At the forefront of the push is Google with its recently announced Goggles product.
Despite the potential there are still numerous hurdles and kinks to be addressed on the usability side. To be fair, the product is was recently released in beta form so a lack of polish is to be expected.
Here are the results of my five item test:
- Cover of The Dip by Seth Godin
- Image Recognition: Perfect
- Results Page: Link to “Compare prices at Google Product Search” and a link to Amazon. Clicked on the Google link and it returned “Your search – isbn 1429532491 – did not match any products”. Solid technical execution but fell short with no results available.
- Bottle of Beringer Founder’s Estate – 2006 Merlot
- Image Recognition: First try yielded an “image not found” and the second came back with inaccurate, though related, results.
- Results Page: All results were pointing to Beringer Alluvium White 2007. Correct brand, but not exactly what I was looking for.
- Droid Box
- Image Recognition: Failed on two attempts.
- Results Page: First picture was recognized “veri on Motorola” which brought back a link to the Droid page on Engadget, Droid on CNET, and then several random links. The second picture resulted in “veil on Google” which lead to links dealing with bridal veils. It appears that Googles gives priority to trying to recognize the text on an object rather than the object itself.
- REI Storefront (Saratoga, CA location)
- Image Recognition: Perfect
- Results Page: Top of the page included a link to the REI logo from the Arctic Bike Club website and the top three Web Results were for the REI home page, REI store locator, and the REI page on Wikipedia.
- iPhone
- Image Recognition: Failed on two attempts
- Results Page: As the recognition failed, I received no search results but did receive a page with “Similar Images”. These images included a machine gun, vintage Mustang, and a hippopotamus. Nice try?
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This article is from Sean Bartlett
From the beginning, Sean’s been convinced that mobile marketing works best when it’s offered as part of a larger brand/marketing strategy. Bored by the status quo, Sean gets excited working with clients and team members who are willing to try new things and make an impact.
Sean has written 12 posts.
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Interesting that they branded the product as “Google Goggles”. I remember Google testing a feature called “Gmail Goggles” in the last year or two. That product forced users to answer a math problem prior to sending late night emails (ie, after the user had donned his or her beer goggles).
Either way, neat stuff. Thanks for the post!