The Nespresso VertuoPlus Deluxe machine has a sleek, streamlined design that, along with the coffee it makes, brightens up any room. To do justice to this product, we knew a traditional ad experience wouldn’t cut it. So instead of confining our communications to a static 2D banner, we used the latest immersive AR technology, integrated into the Wall Street Journal app, to give people the opportunity to view and interact with the machine from any angle, see it at scale in their actual physical environment, and facilitate the direct path to purchase.

The starting point of the experience was a 300x250 display ad within the WSJ app. Unlike a traditional display ad, however, this one invited users to ‘Play’ with a 3D Nespresso VertuoPlus Deluxe machine, allowing them to spin and see it from all angles - introducing a novel element of product interaction to a historically static experience.

The user could then launch an even more immersive experience by clicking ‘See It In Your Space’ and granting camera permission. In this ‘AR mode,’ they could place that same 3D Nespresso machine in true scale onto a surface in their surrounding environment, as if they already owned it. Here, we incorporated features – realistic visualization and scale – that consumers valued in brick-and-mortar experiences but that are impossible to replicate digitally without AR.

From AR mode, the user could click ‘Buy It Now’ and exit to Nespresso’s eCommerce site to complete their purchase.

Although the campaign was only live for a few days at the time of writing, we had some strong preliminary results:

• 26% of users who saw the banner interacted with the 3D Nespresso machine by swiping to

rotate, zooming, and panning.

• Users who triggered AR were incredibly engaged: 30% of them placed the object in their

environment, and 29% of users who placed the object also ended up clicking out to the

Nespresso site to learn more about the machine or to make a purchase -- a promising start for

AR advertising as an engaging creative canvas and powerful driver of effectiveness.