Guardian News & Media (GNM) will be running its first Augmented Reality (AR) print ad this weekend to promote its Guardian iPad edition.
The ad, which will feature in the main section of the Guardian tomorrow (Saturday 21 April), and as a polywrap around the Guardian Weekend magazine, will use Blippar’s image-recognition app. When users ‘blipp’ the ad on their smartphone or Tablet using the app, the ad will be transformed into an interactive experience, through which users will be able to enter a competition to win a 12-month subscription, watch a video about the thinking behind the app and, if using an iPad, tap on a link to the app store so they can download the Guardian iPad edition.
“We’re really excited to be experimenting with this type of advertising for the first time, in order to increase the level of engagement with our consumers,” says Steve Wing, Guardian News & Media’s business director, Mobile. “Providing our readers with instant, relevant content is completely in line with our open and digital-first strategies, and the commercial opportunities of this kind of technology – such as enabling consumers to get immediate access to our award-winning Guardian iPad edition in the app store – are obvious.” 
The ad isn’t the first time GNM has experimented with Blippar in the last seven days. As part of the Guardian’s week-long ‘Battle for the internet’ editorial series this week, two pieces of editorial content in the newspaper also took advantage of Blippar technology, linking to relevant online content on the Guardian website.
“Blippar is proud to be partnering with the Guardian to turn the printed pages of the newspaper interactive through our market leading image-recognition and augmented reality technologies,” says Jessica Butcher, Blippar CMO & Co-founder. “Always the technical pioneer, the Guardian is among the first major news publishers in the UK to appreciate the significant potential of this technology for both editorial and advertising, enabling print stories and ads to be instantaneously unlocked for additional information, video content, interactivity and weblinking. These early trials are just the first step towards a future where newspapers become habitually read phone-in-hand to blipp and extract content, providing readers with experiences embedded within the pages.”
