A few years ago, augmented reality sat in the marketing toolkit as a novelty – great for a moment of delight, hard to tie to a line item on the P&L. That era is over. In interviews with seven leaders across design, education, manufacturing, gaming infrastructure, and digital marketing, a consistent pattern emerges: when AR is used to remove friction in understanding, it behaves like a business instrument. Engagement times rise by roughly 40%, targeted conversions lift between 18% and 34%, and post-sale support burdens can fall by a quarter. The reason is simple – seeing the product, process, or promise “in place” upgrades curiosity into comprehension.
Gor Gasparyan, CEO and Co-Founder of Passionate Agency in London, puts it bluntly:
“My team and I have used AR for campaigns that intentionally blend product design, user experience, and measurable business value, so I have valuable insights about its value from an experiential perspective.
Yes, we have used AR in a handful of projects, but the most successful was most likely when we developed and implemented interactive product demos that potential customers could access directly through their web browser. No app install and no annoyance from an install! WebAR takes away that barrier of entry with customers and delivered product experiences that no amount of standard static images could. Our AR demo duration of 3 minutes resulted in a 40% longer average customer retention over video content. That’s pretty impressive these days, considering that attention spans are measured in seconds.
The biggest lesson learned was AR cannot be not just a cool thing to experience, but an effective mechanism to remove the friction of communicating a product or idea to customers in general. If you do it right, it bridges the brand-to-customer gap, so they can appreciate scale, detail, or function instantaneously. For us, it proved that AR works best when it solves an effective communications disconnect, rather than just a “wow” experience for the purposes of “wow.””
Education tells the same story. Yad Senapathy, Founder and CEO of the Project Management Training Institute (4PMTI), tested a browser-based, no-app experience that turned the path to a PMP® credential into a 3D timeline you could scan and tap through.
“The results were measurable. Engagement time was up approximately 40 percent over our standard landing page, with conversions to actual course sign-ups up nearly 18 percent during the first two months. I was able to track not only views but interactions, which helped me fine-tune the content and the elements that were most interesting.
What I took away from this was that AR is not only a novelty. When it is used for a purpose, it becomes an educational instrument. Seeing a process in three dimensions allowed the professionals to get a better understanding of the path ahead, and that translated into more confidence and stronger enrollment numbers.”
Complex, high-consideration purchases benefit even more. Stefan Zhang, CEO & Founder of Wenzhou Dream Garden Amusement Equipment Co., Ltd., designs and builds custom playgrounds.
“We let customers drop precise models into their own space through a simple phone scan. They walk the design at full scale and truly understand it,” he explains. “After a project is confirmed, AR shifts from a cool sales tool to a reassurance tool – we fine-tune details before installation and avoid costly late changes. Looking ahead, AR overlays can guide crews on-site, step-by-step, to guarantee safety and durability.”
B2B infrastructure sees equally tangible gains. Michael Pedrotti, owner of Ghostcap (server hosting and technical solutions for gamers), rebuilt the sales conversation around live, spatial data. “We projected real-time server performance as floating 3D information – ping, capacity, traffic. Prospects could adjust virtual settings and watch indicators update in real time,” he says.
“This change provided quantifiable results with a 34 percent conversion boost and 28 percent reduced support tickets in Q3 only. The trump card was to allow prospects to dynamically adjust the virtual server settings and observe the performance indicators change in real time. What once took weeks of technical back-and-forth to accomplish now closes in individual demonstrations. The most successful AR application that I built demonstrates how clients can remotely walk into our real server farms, be able to tap on a specific rack and view specifications and uptime statistics. This practical approach has removed our greatest sales obstacle as it allowed us to educate non-technical buyers on the value of infrastructure. AR transformed abstract ideas such as load balancing and resource allocation into demonstrations that can be touched by a prospect and explored easily and instantly.”
Flynn Zaiger, CEO of Online Optimism (New York and New Orleans), began embedding AR in the agency’s physical holiday cards. “Including AR in a holiday card is useful, because people aren’t going to be distracted when they open the mail. Unlike AR examples downloaded from a computer, where an individual may be surrounded by three screens and easily distracted, including a QR code leading to an AR experience means they’ll likely have the time to give it a shot,” he notes. When the timing is right, AR turns a routine touchpoint into a memorable one.
Simplicity is non-negotiable for consumer adoption. On an edtech launch, Sami Shahid of Tkxel deployed a lightweight, browser-based interaction to visualize tools in 3D without an app.
“One particular project I worked on involved developing an augmented reality experience to support a new product launch in the edtech sector. We used MyWebAR to create a browser-based AR interaction that allowed users to visualize educational tools in 3D directly in their environment – no app required. The results were promising:
- User engagement on the landing page increased by over 40%.
- Social sharing and organic reach saw a measurable boost.
- Customers reported a better understanding of the product’s features due to the interactive demonstration.
One crucial lesson I learned in the process was the importance of UX simplicity – WebAR can be incredibly effective, but users always appreciate an experience that loads quickly, is easy to navigate, and offers clear value within the first few seconds.”
From the developer’s chair, the opportunity is matched by practical constraints. Aaron Cunningham, an immersive engineer working across Web3, AR, and AI, sees AR’s primary business value in retention and shareability. “A well-executed browser-based experience keeps users longer than a static page and is far more likely to be shared – signaling the brand is forward-thinking,” he says.
“The hard parts are practical: keep 3D files small and simple so they load fast on phones, make sure the experience runs smoothly on mid-range devices – not only on flagships. One advantage, however, is that WebAR experiences can run directly in browsers or in AR/VR environments, lowering the barrier to entry.”
The winning playbook is simple: keep assets lean, build for the slowest network you’re willing to support, and measure performance like you would any campaign.
Taken together, these cases align around a median effect of roughly +40% engagement versus video or static pages, +18–34% conversion lifts on specific outcomes, and meaningful downstream savings where AR collapses long support or sales cycles. There’s also a qualitative dividend that’s easy to underestimate: faster, more confident decisions once buyers can evaluate a product at the right scale and in the right context. AR, in this sense, is not a channel layered on top of content; it is a communication layer that turns explanation into experience at the exact moment decisions are made.
So what’s still slowing adoption? Many teams still treat AR as a stunt – fun, expensive, and peripheral – rather than as a tool designed to answer a specific business question. Others build and test only on ideal hardware, then ship into the wild and encounter bandwidth, lighting, and device variability that the scene can’t absorb. Some struggle with 3D pipelines and team silos.
The fixes are straightforward, and they echo the experts’ experience. Start with a clear job to be done – explain a complex idea, de-risk a purchase, or teach a process. Design the first five seconds so value is unmissable and the primary call to action is unmistakable. Agree on minimum technical constraints before creative begins so performance is engineered in, not bolted on. Test in the environments and on the devices your audience actually uses. And count results with the same rigor you bring to paid performance: session depth, completion rate, assisted conversions, and post-interaction actions.
None of this replaces your website, your video, or your sales team. It connects them. AR fills the gap between explanation and conviction, turning “I’ll think about it” into “I get it.” That’s why the organizations above are seeing repeatable gains – not because AR is flashy, but because it’s useful at the exact point of decision.
And this is just the opening chapter. Over the next three to four years, consumer-grade AR glasses are likely to enter the market in meaningful numbers – much as smartphones did 17 years ago. The brands that train customers today to interact with spatial content – short, useful, in context – will be the brands that lead tomorrow. Phones today; glasses tomorrow. Build the habit loop now, while the rest of the market is still catching up.
