We’ve created an application and a software that allows customers or people on the web to instantly access an image, by being able to pull out the products and services within that image.
It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. With apologies to all you art lovers out there, actually reading a thousand words is much more entertaining than staring mindlessly at a picture for 45 minutes. The information presented by a picture can only take you so far — eventually, you just start making up reasons explaining why the Mona Lisa has such a creepy smile.
But what if a picture could literally contain a thousand words, combining the best parts of vision and text, all located within one easy-to-use platform? To understand that concept, we must understand OVRHD.
Michael Bhanos, founder of OVRHD, spent 12 years submersed in the digital advertising world. During that timespan, Bhanos came to a realization — in our current, technologically-advanced age, online imagery could and should be doing better things. In October 2013, OVRHD was launched.
“The one thing that I really learned, online imagery is the most valuable aspect of marketing and sales, in order to engage, communicate, and sell products to customers online,” Bhanos said. “You can’t just reach into an image and pull out the products, services, and information that you want. That’s the problem we’ve solved. We’ve created an application and a software that allows customers or people on the web to instantly access an image, by being able to pull out the products and services within that image.”
Envision a picture of superstar QB Aaron Rodgers. Normally, you would look at the image, conclude he’s the greatest football player ever created, and move on. OVRHD changes this process — users of their product can create interactive images by placing tags, links, videos, playlists, and feeds within the image and then distribute those images across the internet.
Again, envision a picture of superstar QB Aaron Rodgers, but this time it has been modified by OVRHD. The possibilities are basically endless: scroll over his socks and find out the exact brand, composition, and a link to purchase them; scroll over his helmet and watch a video chronicling the franchise history of the Green Bay Packers; scroll over his right arm and learn the workout regimen that has transformed him into an undeniable, unstoppable force; or scroll over his two MVP trophies and follow a link to any number of articles explaining his status as the preeminent QB in football.
“It’s not that businesses don’t want to create this type of interactive imagery, it’s just before OVRHD it was really time/cost/technically-prohibitive,” Bhanos. “With OVRHD, what took brands and publishers hours of technical skill to create, now takes minutes because our application is so intuitive and takes no development skill. You can give this interface to every one of your editors, content creators, bloggers, social media people, even your customers, increasing the performance and output for all that type of content.”
Just as OVRHD makes creating interactive images easy, they make them even easier to distribute. Every image has an embed code and share links directly associated with it. Remember how easy it is to share a favorite YouTube video with your friends? Exact same concept.
“What we’re seeing with this technology, it’s increasing brand engagement by 25x, e-retailer visits by 15x, and reducing shopping cart abandonment — when it’s being used from an e-commerce perspective — by 30 percent,” Bhanos said. “It doesn’t just have application for e-commerce, it has a helluva lot of application for agencies, ad campaigns, and publications, because of those first two numbers.”
Recent graduates of Boom Startup, OVRHD has been fully functional for the last month and has already signed contracts with Backcountry, Experticity, and USSA. Subscriptions are annual, billed monthly, and clients are offered services ranging from basic to enterprise-level.
The days of staring at images and trying to interpret them are over. In 2015, online interaction is king. And as more people look to take advantage of the opportunities produced by online imagery and interactivity, OVRHD waits with open arms.
“Without that instant access to purchases, and the average online users attention span being less than six seconds, businesses are leaving tons of money on the table due to this missed opportunity,” Bhanos said. “So we created this application that allows a brand to upload a photo, and then create tags on the photo for different information. It creates this tag eco-system of imagery, whether it’s tagged to a product page, service, or publication, and you’re expanding the breadth and width of where your content can go.”
Published 3/2/2015
