Bridget Dolan and her team at Sephora’s Innovation Lab, based in San Francisco, were a year into developing a new virtual reality tool for the retailer’s mobile app when the technology used to power the experience saw a breakthrough.
“When it comes to augmented and virtual reality, it can only be successful if it’s truly useful,” said Dolan, Sephora’s head of innovation. “We weren’t interested in just buzzy. A lot of things like technical accuracy and timing had to come together, and there was a time last year when, during testing, we hit a tipping point.”
Sephora’s team and its technology provider, augmented reality platform ModiFace, had pushed facial recognition technology to a new point of sophistication. After months of development, the technology can break down one virtual makeup application into a step-by-step layering process, while maintaining critical accuracy and reaching mass scale.
More in Marketing
WPP client Dell Technologies is rolling out its global in-housing initiative, reshaping media-buying strategy
The technology giant is evolving its media model in a manner that will alter its relationships with third-parties.
In the face of fragmentation, Dmexco is now a smaller stage for ad tech’s big conversations
These days, it’s still where business gets done, but increasingly for a narrower slice of the ecosystem.
When it comes to Perplexity’s ad business, the platform is at a crossroads
The departure of Perplexity’s ads chief Taz Patel underscores a broader identity question the AI platform has yet to resolve.