On Thursday, LA-based Camera IQ announced the closing of its $5 million Series A funding round led by Shasta Ventures. So far, Camera IQ has raised a total of more than $14 million in funding.
Camera IQ has built a tech platform that makes it easier for brands to interact with their customers via augmented reality. If a company has an idea, the Camera IQ platform provides a simple way to translate that idea into an AR experience, whether that means adding a virtual object to the user’s phone camera or overlaying effects on a user’s face.
“For beauty brands building e-commerce businesses, AR and virtual try-on are essential to providing the user experience to incentivize purchases,” Elaine Chen, vice president of brand marketing and innovation at wet n wild Beauty/Markwins, said in a statement. The brand recently worked with Camera IQ on its launch of a collaboration with Sanrio, and allowed users to visualize themselves as different characters.
Timing is always important when leading a company, but that’s especially true when you’re running a company that deals with a cutting-edge technology like AR. CEO Allison Ferenci co-founded Camera IQ with Sonia Tsao in 2016, the same year that AR game Pokemon Go swept the nation and AR seemed like it was going to be the next big thing.
Years later, AR still seems like it’s going to catch on at any moment. But according to Ferenci, that moment is now.
“I’ve been in the AR space for eight years waiting for it to become ‘a big thing’ as opposed to ‘the next big thing,’” Ferenci told Built In.
But she says that if we look at social media platforms, AR is already here. Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram all have AR filters built into the camera function. People can chat with each other while wearing virtual hats, post stories with their faces or voices distorted and play games thanks to AR. Ferenci says that AR innovations — like the AR randomizer feature — has helped AR go viral across social platforms.
As a result, Camera IQ wants to help brands take part in this new-age marketing opportunity. The company has found that it has a 60 percent play rate on the AR experiences it helps create, meaning that 60 percent of people who see the AR experience choose to open and test it out. The company also adds that the share rate for its AR experiences is double what the average social post gets.
Camera IQ says that more brands have been coming to the company in 2020. The company also noticed that its AR experiences are getting more traction this year, with 20 percent of them getting over one million views.
This new funding will help the company as it aims to keep this momentum going. In addition, Camera IQ plans to make several key hires across its sales, marketing and product development teams.
