Today, Layar has surpassed a huge milestone. The Layar App, the mobile application for iOS and Android which has served as the backbone for the growth of Layar as a whole, has now been downloaded more than 30 million times!
This is a huge moment for Layar and for interactive print. The growth of the Layar Creator and interactive print is evident in the continued download growth of the Layar App across the world. Now the interactive print content created by over 40,000 publishers is easily viewable on an app with over 30 million downloads.
With Layar on 30 million devices and smartphone sales expected to hit 1 billion in 2013 alone, it is clear from these amazing numbers that the world is ready for augmented reality. As hardware technology and internet connectivity progresses, users are hungry for more information and are looking for ways to fulfill this need.
The world is ready with 1 billion smartphones in 2013 and Layar is ready with 40,000 publishers and 30 million downloads. These incredible milestones underscores the fact that interactive print is here and it’s taking the print world by storm.
Are you ready to use Layar to integrate your print and digital channels, add additional revenue to your ad sales and grow consumer engagement? Get started today!
To mark this occasion of 30 million downloads, we’ve put together a report that illustrates some of the key facts and figures and provides a current snapshot of Layar. In it you will find…
Thanks to everyone who followed along and to each one of our 30 million downloaders – it’s you who have made Layar into what it is today. Here’s to the next 30 million!
Queen’s Day, a huge public holiday this Tuesday in the Netherlands, has a rich history with Layar. Just last year, the local newspaper where the Queen herself was to visit enhanced its pages with extra content about the royal visit using Layar. It even provided a link to a livestream of the day’s events for supported devices.
This year, it’s not just Queen’s Day – it’s also the coronation of the new King (yes, next year it will be King’s Day) and with this evolution comes more evolution of augmented reality and interactive print with Layar.
A new Dutch augmented reality agency AugmentNL has come up with a unique way to use some of the most prominent space in Amsterdam as interactive print. The tall and wide Overhoeksgebouw has long been a popular Amsterdam ad space and is currently draped in a decoration for Queen’s Day. Scanning this side of building liberates this space to the people of Amsterdam, letting them post messages and drawings for all to see.
For those in Amsterdam this week, by scanning the side of the Overhoeksgebouw you can view the latest tweet featuring the hashtag #FelicitatieXXL and add your own drawn graffiti to the side. This teaser project from AugmentNL shows the wide audience a simple interactive print ad campaign can have when placed in a prominent location.
Using the dynamic widgets available with Layar’s technology, AugmentNL can provide a live feed of tweets along with an interactive canvas for drawing right on the side of the building. It’s certainly a unique idea, but with Layar it’s simple and easy to implement very quickly.
So if you’re in town for Queen’s Day, scan the Overhoeksgebouw by the IJ river and see how interactive print isn’t just for magazines – it’s great for providing interactivity on large outdoor advertising as well!
The Dutch magazine Print Power has created a truly magical cover for its latest issue with Layar’s interactive print. Scanning the cover with Layar brings the static cover to life with a truly awesome video of a magician doing several great close-up card tricks in less than 60 seconds. It’s really something to see!
When we talk about adding the “Wow” factor to your print, this is what we mean! This is a very effective implementation of Layar’s interactive print technology. The call-to-action in the upper right instructs the reader to watch as the magician on the cover comes alive.
This is right up there among the best covers we’ve seen in interactive print, along with the robots on this Reader’s Digest cover and our own LAYARED Magazine with co-founder Raimo. There are lots of other great examples out there, but Print Power has really set the standard for augmented magazine covers!
It’s been a few months since we first published our Best Practices Guide for the Layar Creator, and a lot has changed since then! So here we are with a completely refreshed and updated guide filled with loads of new insights from successful interactive print campaigns.
In our new guide, titled Steps to Effective Campaign Creation, you can find lots of great tips to make your next interactive print campaign your best one yet. In the guide you’ll find:
Getting started with interactive print
Best practices for the Layar Creator
Concepting your campaign
“Dos and Don’ts” for instruction pages, calls-to-action and more
Testing your campaign
Integrating interactive print into your workflow
And more!
We’ve worked very hard to create a friendly guide that should help improve your interactive print campaigns, but let us know if you think anything’s missing or if you have any questions. Just mail georgia@layar.com to get in touch.
One way to offer readers more content in a single space is to create an HTML Widget with expandable and collapsible content areas. It’s great for adding an FAQ, images or extra product information to your printed pages in a way that’s friendly to users and easy to build.
Follow this link to check out the tutorial and download our example template to build your own!
It’s been just a few days short of two weeks since we started counting down the downloads remaining until we hit 30 million! Today we stand just under 200,000 downloads away and we’re fast approaching the goal.
Be sure to follow our progress as we approach 30 million and share interesting facts and stories “behind the numbers” on Twitter with the hashtag #Layar30M. We’ve already posted a bunch, check out the rundown of what we’ve heard so far down below!
And make sure to keep an eye over at Layar.com/30M to read up on everything we post.
4.4 billion operations!
We do a lot of sending and receiving of data, and lots of requests are made to our back-end database. Just last month, our database process 4.4 BILLION input/output operations. That’s a lot of activity!
Layar tattoos!
One enterprising individual as gone as far as to turn a tattoo into interactive “print” (skin?). This goes to show that Layar isn’t just for magazines, but can be on many flat surfaces, including product packaging!
It’s more than just print!
People are enhancing more than magazines and business cards. Real estate agency Van Santvoort enhanced the walls of their kiosk with help from Layar partner Limebizz. Check it out on the blog.
Elanders is our partner!
We’ve partnered with Elanders UK, part of a global printing firm with production across 4 continents. Their customers include global brands like Jaguar Land Rover, Tesco and Bosch. Read more on the blog.
LOTS of coffee!
According to the computer living inside of our office coffee machine, we consumed over 12,000 cups of coffee last year! We work hard at making the best interactive print solutions out there.
A new Dutch augmented reality agency 
