September 15 marks the start of ARROUND Token Sale, the project that will allow combining virtual and real environments using augmented reality technologies. How will it work? What does this combination have to offer businesses and regular users? We asked these and a host of other questions to the CEO of ARROUND – Neil Bryant who boasts many years of successful experience in international IT companies and news agencies

- Many have heard about augmented reality, but not all understand what this term implies. Can you tell us a about AR and how the ARROUND project has made use of the technology?

- Imagine the boundary between the virtual and real world disappeared and you gained new and unique abilities: you can now navigate the streets of unfamiliar cities or easily find the goods you’re looking for on the store shelves, or have a look into the outer space or see the past as clear as you see the present when you’re looking at an interactive museum exhibit… Augmented reality will give you the ability to see ordinary things in an extraordinary way and ARROUND will change your perception of work, education, games and the very notion of interacting with your surroundings! By launching our token sale we are making a statement – welcome to a new world!

    ARROUND – is not limited to entertainment, it is an ecosystem that allows companies to monetize their products and services on the basis of decentralized crypto economics.

- Sounds ambitious, what will ensure this works?

- Thanks to the new communication capabilities of augmented reality, smartphone app using the built-in camera will allow the user to see AR objects projected onto his or her surroundings, tethered to any specific location via GPS. By the way, absolutely any object can be a Round: a shape, text message, banner, etc. All users will be able to make their own Rounds. Besides, ad formats in AR can be almost anything, and price per view is way lower than in traditional ad channels.

    Here is a few examples: the Top Gear magazine has recently published an issue with video inserts that could be viewed on the pages of the magazine by pointing a smartphone camera at the page. Next example, one famous alcohol brand made its label take the user on a 3D-tour through a small town of Åhus, Sweden, where the product is made.

    Ads using AR technologies is always an interesting and memorable gimmick thanks to the WOW-effect it can impress the audience a lot better and in the end turns out to be more effective!

- In other words, by using a smartphone camera a user will delve into the world of augmented reality?

- Yes, smartphones will allow people to see more. For example, someone is walking around town and sees a beautiful building, points the camera at it and sees a historical note about the building and events that it is relevant to, user notes along the lines of “entrance here”, “museum inside”, “cafe on the roof”. After a cup of coffee with a bird’s view on the town the user can create his own Round about the place and either approve or disapprove other people’s review about the place.

    From the marketing standpoint ARROUND capabilities are limitless. The easiest thing is to create a simple and convenient navigation pointers around shopping malls that is either lacklustre or absent altogether. Venues will be happy to have the ability to place information about their offers and specials in an easily-digested format for the visitors to see instead of relying on traditional media to deliver their message. That said, users will see relevant content here and now which is very important for advertisers who have long since come to value quality over quantity in their approach to audience engagement. ARROUND lets them make tailored offers to their target audiences based on the geolocation analysis, last searches and regular user requests.

- So ARROUND expands the boundaries of the real world, augmenting it with important, interesting and useful information?

- Yes, this is what our project is about. Simply install the app on your smartphone and the world of ARROUND becomes readily available along with other users’ comments. The user can leave his or her own reviews on restaurants, concerts and movies. What’s important is that these impressions will be available to all ARROUND users who have visited the place instead of the profile page of the creator on a traditional social media platform.

- You mentioned that ads in AR will be cheaper than what traditional channels can offer. Is this true?

- Sure. It is really simple: take any billboard from the downtown of a big city, such as Paris, where it would generate about 50,000 impressions per day and costs about $10,000 per month. For comparison, an online banner would cost about $300 to generate 50,000 impressions per day. ARROUND can offer an AR-billboard that would cost $10,000 in real life for just $300.

- Have potential advertisers already caught wind of it and queued up?

- Large international companies have expressed their interest in or project. We are already launching pilot projects with such brands as DANONE, Carmex, Magnat, TRESemme, Scania, Campari… So we do have potential advertisers, this allows us to come to a conclusion that our product along with the ARR token that will serve as the payment unit in the system will be in demand.

- You are launching an ICO which means that anyone can become part of your project today?

- Yes. You can buy our tokens and learn more about the project on our website at arround.io.

So far we have concluded the PreSale stage and on September 15 we are launching the Token Sale with a Soft Cap of $5,000,000 and Hard Cap of $30,000,000. There are 3,000,000,000 ARR tokens available for purchase, priced at $0.035 US per token. As I have already said after the platform is launched, these tokens will become the payment unit of the project (for example it can be used to pay for ad spaces rent)

In the near future we plan to release our mobile application on Android and iOS. Before the end of 2018 we will begin actively attracting users to the platform while filling the alpha version of it with content as well as launch ad campaigns together with our strategic partners.