Banuba is one of the market leaders in the augmented reality space. Its products are feature-rich and flexible enough to be used in many domains. It is understandable that companies from these industries seek out mutually beneficial partnerships with us. In this article, we will give a brief overview of the cooperation opportunities, the niches where they bring the most value, and some examples of existing partnerships.
Industries
Two out of three Banuba products – Banuba Face AR SDK and Video Editor SDK – have a wide range of applications.
Video conferencing
Banuba SDK adds a lot of value to video calling apps, both in business and casual settings.
Firstly, it can increase camera enablement rate. Many people are self-conscious about their appearance. Features like face touch-up and virtual makeup can remove skin imperfections, smoothen wrinkles, and negate camera distortions, making every user look their best. As a result, people are more willing to enable the video feature on their video call.
Secondly, it can increase engagement. Besides the abovementioned touch-up and AR makeup, face filters, virtual backgrounds, and avatars all contribute to making people immersed. The more fun people have, the more time they will spend on your app.
Thirdly, it can improve the quality of image on low-speed connections and decrease the costs of FullHD video quality. This is thanks to the image upscaling built into the SDK. Specially-trained neural networks automatically and seamlessly improve the resolution of each frame, which means you can get better results on low bandwidth or send less data to achieve the best quality.
Beauty & Accessories
Two out of three Banuba products fit well into these spaces: Banuba Face AR SDK and Tint – a guided virtual try-on solution. They can be used to create try-before-you-buy experiences from scratch (the SDK) or integrate ready-made ones (Tint). However, at the core the benefits they provide are similar.
The main one is the increase in conversions and decrease in returns. It primarily comes courtesy of realistic product display.
Can you guess which lipstick is a real product and which one is virtual?
One is a picture of a physical lipstick. The other is virtual.
In addition, Tint has an advanced AI recommendation engine, which automatically analyzes the person’s facial features and color profile and suggests the most appropriate products. About 70% of returns happen for customer preference reasons, e.g. buyer’s remorse or mismatch between the expected and actual product colors. This is the area where Banuba products would have the best effect.
The second advantage would be an increase in average order value. Both Tint and Banuba Face AR SDK support multiple-product try-on. Entire sets of jewelry or makeup can be created and matched to help people get the best experience and entice them to buy several products instead of one.
Finally, it makes cosmetics businesses more eco-friendly, while saving them money. This comes in a form of digital samples. Realistic-looking virtual products are cheap to make, and it only takes a few hours to make unlimited copies of them – no packaging or microplastics required.
Video editing
Video editor SDK has everything you need to create audiovisual content in one easy-to-integrate package.
This means that any kind of application that is at least partially focused on video editing can benefit from it. The most common kind is social media. Since TikTok pushed short videos to the forefront, other networks are trying to catch up with similar offerings.
Partnership opportunities
So how can you partner up with Banuba and which form this cooperation might take? This would largely depend on the kind of business that you run.
Technology vendors
Sometimes, companies sell products that can work well in tandem with ours. In this case, it is only natural that they would like to enhance their offering by letting their clients also integrate ours in a single convenient package.
The best example would be our cooperation with Agora. Their video conferencing SDK is one of the best in the market, providing high image and sound quality, lots of useful features, and a streamlined integration process. One of the main benefits they grant to their clients is a massive decrease in time-to-market. However, if a company wants to use several SDKs, marrying them in one app could take more time than making everything from scratch.
This is why Agora opened an extensions marketplace. There they would place their partners’ products converted into plugins fully compatible with Agora’s own products. This lets clients build their apps from premade parts – much easier than it would’ve been otherwise.
The same approach also works for other niches. Say you specialize in making online stores for beauty brands. Offering your customers a virtual try-on solution will add value to their project and help you earn more.
R&D
Working in the augmented reality market for over 6 years brought us a lot of experience. This includes doing custom development for clients that need a bit extra from our products, but also additional research as a separate business service.
For example, a high-profile social media company required specific face filters for their photo and video offering. Their own staff wasn’t as experienced with this field and had too much other work. So Banuba’s R&D department took this job on themselves. This resulted in a long and fruitful relationship where we made whitelabel solutions and content for our partner.
Another option could be AR content licensing. Banuba asset store has over 1000 premade effects available for this exact purpose.
Conclusion
Partnering up with Banuba lets companies enhance their products and services and adds value to their offerings. This is especially noticeable in industries like Video conferencing, Cosmetics, and Video editing. If your company is a technology vendor or might need additional R&D on augmented reality and related subjects, let us know!
