Combining place-based, targeted out-of-home advertising with interactive search, Evincii, a new company based in Mountain View, Calif., will announce today (April 14) the launch of its Search Engine in the Store. Currently installed in 135 stores of Longs Drugs, a regional drugstore chain in California, Nevada and Hawaii, the network of interactive touch screens guides shoppers in the over-the-counter medicine category while providing advertisers the opportunity to reach consumers at the point of purchase. Johnson & Johnson is the first advertiser to place advertising on the network.Our take:
Hyperlocal, in-store search and "augmeneted reality" has long been heralded as the next big thing in Internet pervasiveness -- literally connecting the real world with the virtual world to provide the strengths of both. Without having seen Evincii's tech in action (even their website is pretty light on actual info), we're hesitatnt to say whether it will usher in a new era of customer convenience. The skeptic in us says probably not. More likely, the system merges together several existing forms of in-store marketing like digital signage and interactive kiosks, perhaps with some mobile component, to provide better information access to savvy consumers.
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