VidIt
Spearheading the Augmented Reality Revolution

Remember the scene in Back to the Future II when Michael J. Fox’s character, Marty, while walking around town, gets startled by a digital great white shark advertising the new JAWS 19 movie? When serial entrepreneur Rene Rodriguez, Founder, VidIt watched this scene back in 2007, he envisioned the world becoming a virtual canvas. Although AR was at a nascent stage then, Rodriguez envisioned being a part of this soon-to-be interactive world. This led to the inception of VidIt—one of the first social media platforms bringing the power of AR to the users, where they can create, attach and share content easily. “Although there was no apt hardware, software available at that time, I started working on building the company in 2007 as I knew that if I stick with it, we will be at the leading edge when the time comes,” asserts Rodriguez. “It was just a matter of time for the right spark to ignite this industry into a blaze that will take this world to the next evolution of communication, creation, and expression,” he adds.

According to Rodriguez, there is still enough social stigma and misconception around the power of AR as it’s been presented majorly as a feature, filter, or app. The game Pokemon GO introduced masses to simple AR such as Nike have been coming up with their own apps leveraging AR technology. VidIt is taking AR to the next level with image recognition and a visual search engine that turns the platform into an unmatched ecosystem for virtual content. “We are bringing AR to the mainstream by democratizing it and enabling everyone on the planet to be an AR creator like a social media platform— and to share their passion and personal creative expression through AR experiences,” explains Rodriguez.

VidIt allows users to attach and share any type of virtual content onto any image, picture, brand, or landmark and anchor them to 3D models, locations, or physical images.

The anchors act as channels, and the experiences are discoverable in the feed and shareable to social media and via private channels for maximum reach. In addition, VidIt also enables users to attach comments or reviews on products, allowing them to tag links, videos, and even 3D messages onto any image. The company also empowers the users to create geo content, enabling them to drop their content in geographical locations. For instance, if a designer wants to create content related to a university, he can drop his content in every university around the world, available to anybody who wants to see his content worldwide in any university. “This content that the designer is dropping at a geographical location gives him the power to interact with this world in a new form. The users that interact with the content can take pictures or record videos with that, sharable across all social media platforms,” says Rodriguez.

We are bringing AR to the mainstream by democratizing it and enabling everyone on the planet to be an AR creator and to share their passion and personal creative expression through AR experiences

Rodriguez explains that in order to leverage AR, companies need to have a lot of money to develop their own app with desired features. Besides, they need to follow it up with the tough act of convincing the users to download their app to interact with their brand.

“Having understood their challenges, we brought to market our first model as a free platform wherein everyone can bring in their 2D/3D content and interact in different forms with the elements/assets present in our preexisting library,” states Rodriguez.

On the enterprise side, VidIt has developed a suite of AR content seeding tools—Text AR, Web AR, and Scan AR. The Text AR tool enables clients to deliver their products directly to their customers (no app required), whereas the Web AR tool empowers clients to turn their sites into AR. The Scan AR tool enables users to simply point their smartphones at any image or object and see it come to life. These tools allow creators to reach audiences where and when they are the most receptive and are monetized through a SaaS model. In addition to offering free trials with this model, the company aims to educate and explain to clients the benefits of AR in different verticals and channels. Being a bridging platform for creating AR experiences between brands and existing social media outlets, VidIt has the unparalleled ability to make the most of any brands’ marketing budgets from day one. VidIt offers a basic subscription package of $499 a month and gives creators freedom to choose any number of pictures to be converted to AR. The company first provides the client with an API, followed by the desired information and links which can be integrated into their website, enabling them to be up and running in a matter of days.

Over the years, VidIt has garnered several success stories up its sleeves empowering creators, influencers, ambassadors, designers, dealers, or builders. For instance, the company helped one of its clients increase their average ticket sales by over 125 percent and decreased their returns from 30 percent to zero. As a furniture company with over 600 stores, this client increased their customers’ average time spent on their website to over 10 minutes and 27 seconds.

Steering ahead to create a unique niche for itself in the market, VidIt focuses on forming strategic partners to reach more customers. The company plans on adopting an effective, aggressive marketing strategy to educate companies leveraging e-commerce and help them transform their websites. VidIt also intends to garner the attention of more influencers through its free model. “Content is what is important, and that’s what we are the platform of the content,” concludes Rodriguez.