The following blogpost is from Claire Boonstra, co-founder and head of BizDev at Layar.

Recently, Layar has set its focus squarely on making print interactive with digital content by activating the pages of magazines, newspapers, flyers and posters with videos, links to websites and the ability to share to social networks.

In case you are not yet familiar with the possibilities of interactive print, have a look at some of our recent campaigns with VPRO, LINDA., What’s Next and vtwonen.

Interactive print creates a new business opportunity for organizations that use the paper medium, such as publishers, advertisers, and brands with their own catalogues. As these organizations define the business case for interactive print, a new demand for detailed metrics is emerging.

We have crafted a whitepaper, titled Layar shows significant reach, conversion and click-through rates from paper to digital content. In it we include the key metrics defining the market potential for interactive paper, gathered from both external research agencies and our own internal metrics.

We provide figures for how many people are…

• able to use Layar - The number of people who have a smartphone capable of running Layar.
• using Layar now - The number of people who have installed and use Layar.
• using Layar with print - The number of people using Layar to view content on a print publication, or as we’re calling it, “conversion.”
• using Layar to click through - The number of people clicking through to the digital content from the paper, also known as “click-through rate” or “CTR.”

Highlights of our research include:

• Depending on the region, 8% - 38% of the global population currently owns a smartphone capable of running Layar. This is expected to grow to as high as 60% by 2016.
• The Layar application leads the market with over 20 million installations and between 2 and 3 million users who open the application each month (active users). Other AR apps see lower penetration figures on both Android and iPhone platforms.
• Magazine and newspaper campaigns see roughly 1% of total readers interacting with digital content via Layar.
• Of all digital content displayed in print, roughly 20% are clicked through to the underlying action (e.g., video, web-shop, mobile site, Facebook page, etc.).

To learn more, download the full report and dive into the numbers!

There aren’t a lot of publicly available statistics on the use of mobile augmented reality, let alone its use with interactive print. There has been a lot of hype around the subject and it’s time to just talk numbers.

With this document, we are aiming to kick-start a discussion about metrics and results achieved both with AR and with interactive print. We would love to hear your questions and remarks, so please leave us a comment below!

Earlier this week, Layar CEO Raimo van der Klein spoke with Anita de Beijl of Sanoma Media’s vtwonen at Mobile Convention Amsterdam. The two shared statistics and insights from vtwonen’s recent campaign using Layar to augment the pages of its magalogue.

Embedded above is the entirety of this presentation, which was given in Dutch (sorry non Dutchies). Click here to learn more about the vtwonen project!

Thanks to MoCoAm for letting us record and post this presentation.

It was over a year an a half ago when Layar co-founder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald posted a video to his YouTube account revealing details of the world’s first augmented reality browser. Today that video has been viewed more than one million times, so we thought it was time to refresh it for 2011.

Today, we are very excited to introduce a brand-spankin’ new video that expresses the vision and philosophy of Layar. Produced by the wonderful people at Campfire Creative, the video below features interviews with the Layar co-founders as well as examples of the impactful augmented reality experiences that live on our platform today.

Some of the really great layers featured in this beautifully-made video include:

• Tweeps Around, by TABworldmedia


• Historic Market Street, by bigBigBang


• In-N-Out Locations, by Dutchcowboy & AugmentReality


• Woomba Mania, by Superimpose / Hoppala


• Hostage Ware Shop, by HPSC

Please feel free to spread this video around, embed it on your website or share a link with your friends on Facebook, Twitter or other social networks. If you would like to download the video, simply follow this link (Right click and choose “Save Link As”).

As a former Nokia executive turned consultant and speaker, Tomi Ahonen has bolstered his reputation in the mobile industry by authoring six bestselling hardcover books and three eBooks. His latest book, The Insider’s Guide to Mobile, is a free eBook which details “the customers, services, apps, phones and business of the newest trillion dollar industry.”

The book marks Tomi’s tenth publication, and to celebrate the anniversary he asked Layar CEO Raimo van der Klein to author the book’s foreword. In it, Raimo details his own history in the mobile industry, including his time with Nokia and KPN, as well as his formation of Mobile Monday Amsterdam with fellow Layar co-founders Maarten and Claire.

Additionally, he explains his vision of where the mobile industry lies today.

“Basically now we have entered the third wave of mobile. First was Communication, second was Content and now the third is Context. We are barely scratching the surface of this third wave,” he writes. “The exciting stuff is happening in the middle, between the organized data in the cloud and the actual ‘dumb’ sensor information. In the complete history of content we have never been confronted with creating sensor based dynamic services that fit the context of a user. […] I consider this phase in mobile to be the phase where we will see the true face of this medium.”

You can read the entirety of Raimo’s foreword over on Tomi’s blog, Communities Dominate Brands, and to download Tomi’s free eBook, The Insider’s Guide to Mobile, head on over to the book’s page on Lulu.

Last week we introduced you to Klasien van de Zandschulp, one of the fresher faces at Layar who works with user research and interaction design. This week we have another recent hire to profile – Ivo van Barneveld, manager of the Layar Partner Network.

Ivo is a native to the Netherlands with over a decade of work experience in mobile technology, so here’s a bit about him and his experiences so far at Layar.

“I was born in Cadier en Keer in the southern part of the Netherlands (near Maastricht). I lived in the provence of Limburg for the first 4 years of my life and then moved to Dalfsen (near Zwolle) at the age of 5,” says Ivo.

“I have one sister who is three years younger than me and as a family we would spend many, many holidays in Sweden. I really love that country” he adds. “I lived in Dalfsen until the age of 18 when I left to attend college.”

Ivo attended the Delft University of Technology where he earned his Master’s degree in Applied Physics. Before coming to Layar, he worked as a manager at ProRail, which is responsible for the Dutch railway infrastructure.

The majority of his previous work career, however, is from his time with Nokia. Ivo worked for Nokia in several areas, including Networks Forum Nokia and Mobile Video. Now at Layar, Ivo manages the Layar Partner Network.

“As manager of the Layar Partner Network, I provide the premium tier of our developer community with tools, information and business opportunities to make them successful. I organise webinars, develop new initiatives and manage communication between developers, brands and agencies that use Layar,” he says. “The thing I like most about working at Layar is the great group of people I get to work with, and the quick decision making that a smaller company allows.”

Outside of work, for Ivo, family comes first. He is married and has three daughters, ages 3, 6 and 7. Ivo devotes most of his free time to his family, like helping manage the field hockey team two of his daughters play on. With the time left over, he enjoys running and cycling, as well as reading. A book he really recommends is Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh, even if you’re not into maths!

To get in touch with Ivo about the Layar Partner Network, you can email him at Ivo@Layar.com.