DISCUSSION

Will feel and touch tech transform mobile marketing and commerce?

January 31, 2017Written by Tom Ryan

While much of advertising appeals to sight and sound, haptic feedback is arriving to add feeling and texture to mobile devices. The technology basically adds forms of physical feedback to a mobile video. “For example, a phone could vibrate to help the user ‘feel’ the rumbling of a car’s engine. Or it could vibrate quick and suddenly during a horror movie trailer,” offers Medialife Magazine in an example. Perhaps more significantly, haptic feedback, using ultrasound technology and sensors, can add “texture,” whether the user’s finger is actually touching or hovering above the glass screen. At the CES show, Tanvas, a haptic start-up that uses “electrostatics to control friction and create virtual touch,” showed how a finger on a mobile screen can virtually feel water, pebbles and sand as well as the pluck of strings on a guitar. In a partnership with Bonobos, Tanvas showed an app that enabled the user to feel the difference between a cotton and corduroy fabric on a pair of pants. “Touchscreens are more integrated into our lives than ever and yet we are still tapping away at lifeless glass,” Tanvas CEO Greg Topel said in a press release. While haptic feedback may enhance mobile commerce overall, it also offers the potential to transform the mobile ad experience. According to a new study from IPG Media Lab and the haptic advertising company, Immersion, adding a sense of touch to a video advertisement on a mobile device led to a 37 percent increase in happiness levels, a 30 percent increase in excitement levels, and a 62 percent hike in feelings of connection with the brand advertised. Immersion’s press release stated that the strong response reflects the close “connection between touch and emotion.”

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