Users and viewers of beauty videos on YouTube would now be able to virtually try out products even as they watch such videos and makeup tutorials on the social media platform with the help of augmented reality (AR). This new feature to the video sharing platform has been named as AR Beauty Try-On and was launched earlier this week and was based on the perception of Google about the high popularity of beauty videos in general and makeup tutorials in particular on YouTube.

The YouTube iOS app was used earlier this year as an experiment by YouTube where in the company added an AR experience to the videos of several beauty brands. Users could see the AR effect by using the app. This AR based app allowed the users of YouTube to virtually try on the lipstick being discussed in a video whit the help of the camera on their phones. The experiment revealed that about 30 per cent of the users and viewers of such videos used the AR experience and each spent more than 80 seconds watching the videos along with the activated AR on the average. Google experts viewed that those levels of engagement were high enough for the company to give a serious attention to the use of AR for the video sharing platform and thereby decided to add it as a feature on YouTube and for a wider rollout.

A campaign can be launched by beauty brands on YouTube by promoting the AR Beauty Try-On and working together with FameBit – the in-house branded content platform of Google. This would help the brands to add the AR feature to the makeup tutorial videos that would form a part of their campaigns.

MAC Cosmetics is the first brand to use such as campaign and Google believes that there would be many more brands that would follow suit. Such a feature would not only help to keep the viewers engaged to a video for longer periods of time but also allow the brand to present a purchase link right below the video. Such links can be for purchasing of the product shown in the video as well as for choosing a specific color which had been virtually tried on by the users or viewer.

However for other products that would not make sense to be tried on in a virtual manner, the combination of Swirl and Poly is being rolled out by Google. Brand would be able to present their products as interactive 3D objects on the mobile web with the help of Swirl which would allow the users and viewers to be able to easily rotate, zoom, or play an animation of the product thereby showing it off from various angles. On the other hand, users would be able to easily edit 3D assets their backgrounds with the help of Poly. It would even allow users to add on realistic reflections.

(Adapted from PCMag.com)