Here’s my interview with Tom Emrich, founder and editor-in-chief of Remix Reality, XR Product leader, Community Builder, Journalist, & Investor, that was conducted on Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, CA. This is part 2 of 2 of my conversations with Emrich, you can see part 1 from 2018 here. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:11.923] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my coverage of AWE past and present, today's interview is with Tom Emmerich in an interview that I did with him this year at Augmented World Expo. diving into his book that he just released called The Next Dimension, How to Use Augmented Reality for Business Growth in the Era of Spatial Computing. So previous episode, it was Tom from 2018, and now is Tom in 2025, looking at this confluence of augmented reality, all the different trends that are happening. Also, all the experience that he got from Meta, 8th Wall, and the Antics Spatial, working with different clients and helping to guide the AR products to be deployed across all these different contexts of augmented reality for marketing, for business growth, and some training stuff as well. So the book is actually diving into all that. There's also some interesting details. scan a qr code and have an ability to chat with a chat gbt agent that is kind of like distilled all the information within the context of the book and you know i've got some other ar art that's included in there as well and so there's stuff within the context of the book that's kind of interesting that he's experimenting with as well also some like chat gbt summaries before you even read the chapter it's got like here's the summarized version of it so you can just kind of flip to those pages and get the digested version So I hadn't had a chance to read the book at all. I just wanted to catch up with Tom and just because I think he's somebody in the industry that is really canny in his insights and looking at the different trends and Yeah, so I'm very curious to see where he continues to go with his extended coverage of what he's doing now with the Remix Reality, this kind of new website that is looking at spatial computing and news and insights, looking at physical AI, immersive interfaces, simulated worlds, perception systems, society, culture, videos, insider content, and reality GPT. So you can go check that out at Remix Reality. And again, his book title is called The Next Dimension, How to Use Augmented Reality for Business Growth in the Era of Spatial Computing. And so this book came out back in November 27th, 2024, published by Wiley. So we'll be covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Tom happened on Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:30.530] Tom Emrich: Hi, my name is Tom Emmerich and I'm like a big fanboy of XR and have always been since around 2009. I've worn a couple of different hats. I've been a product leader, community builder, journalist, investor and worked at some really amazing companies like Niantic and Meta and now I'm back on my own and I've actually started up a media company dedicated to spatial computing.
[00:02:54.179] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:02:58.762] Tom Emrich: I was working at a publishing company back in 2009, and this was a time when the iPad was coming into the fray as a consumer device. The publishing company was worried that paper was going to go away, and they were asking for ways to save paper. And at the time, desktop webcams were making it possible for augmented reality. And if you know anything about 2009 and you remember that time, there were a number of publishers that were starting to experiment with bringing their covers to life, bringing their articles to life with early augmented reality. And so I created a strategy, a product strategy that was rooted in mobile and augmented reality. And I was smitten from that point on. It was definitely filled with a lot of friction at that time, but it really showed how promising blending the digital with the physical was. To reimagine something that you've been so used to, a magazine, could be something brand new. That to me is what augmented reality is all about.
[00:03:58.919] Kent Bye: And so let's talk about your book a bit and then kind of backtrack through your career for the ways that you are interfacing at this intersection of AR and marketing. But maybe you talk a bit about your book that was published this past November and what the title of it is and what the real focus looking at this intersection of AR and marketing.
[00:04:16.227] Tom Emrich: Yeah, thank you. The book is called The Next Dimension, How to Use Augmented Reality for Business Growth in the Era of Spatial Computing. And it's really a celebration of what has been happening in marketing, advertising and sales in relations to the use of augmented reality. You know, a lot of people think about augmented reality as a future technology, and certainly it has a forward thinking approach, and it's going to play a major role in what's happening as a next step post-smartphone. But what's unique about augmented reality is that you can also really take advantage of it on the current wave of computing's devices, a la smartphone AR. And I think if you're a listener, you most likely tried a Snapchat lens or an Instagram filter or a TikTok effect. So that's kind of what I'm talking about. and i've been at the intersection of media and emerging technology particularly augmented reality again since 2009 and so i hadn't seen like the celebration of what's happening in the space like i really wanted to bottle up almost like an archival project like the case studies the roi proof points the brand examples and the wins that are actually happening across the marketing funnel for the brands that are across industry verticals from automotive all the way through to you know, CPG and so on. So the book is meant to really bolster confidence to any business owner that there's a there there with augmented reality. In fact, it's meant to a little bit get you nervous that you're a little bit behind the eight ball and also give you some strategies and a playbook to start to go out and start to play with the technology, pilot, and then prove out a business model to make it part of your business strategy overall.
[00:05:54.755] Kent Bye: What is it about the affordances of augmented reality that you think has captured the imagination of audiences to go beyond 2D, and what are the specific aspects of things that seem to work, or what is it that's different with augmented reality and marketing?
[00:06:09.284] Tom Emrich: I think the big thing is the ability to manipulate reality. I don't think when you're using an augmented reality filter in social, you're literally thinking that, but I think that's what people like about it, is the ability to play with what they're seeing in the real world. Because this technology is playing with perception and our perception of reality. And the ability to edit reality, the ability to remix reality, I think is what gets people really excited. We're all innately storytellers and I think innately world builders, although there hasn't been a lot of accessible world building tools outside of legacy ways like writing down stories or verbally telling stories. And so I see augmented reality as that new tool in the toolkit in a very similar way. So when somebody puts on a filter and they see a rainbow come out of their mouth, it feels like they have control, I think, over what's happening from a reality perspective. And it feels magical. I mean, I hate to use that word, but it really does. It feels like it's not meant to exist. And that's the other thing that augmented reality can do, really bring a lot of wonder into the world and turn the mundane into something extraordinary. We need that in this space. It changes your perspective. It gives you fresh eyes on things that you've done time and time again. Like going back to that book, like being able to go to a store and gamify a store and see the store as like a Minecraft scavenger hunt, which is one example in there, is just a really practical but fun way of saying this is another reason to go to the place that you've been a hundred times. Yeah, that I think is the magic of augmented reality.
[00:07:45.794] Kent Bye: And so I think that there's been a lot of agencies that have been working with creating different augmented reality filters. And you've been a part of 8th Wall, which got acquired by Niantic. You said you spent some time at Meta as well. Maybe you could just trace through a little bit of your career at these different companies. And what were some of the trends that you were starting to see in terms of, like, it seems like there's been different waves of people investing. making these and then you know at some point Meta even removed the ability to create augmented reality filters on Instagram and so it's been kind of like these different waxing and waning moments over time but I'm just curious to hear from your perspective what you've seen and how you tell that story from the perspective of what you've seen in the trenches and the context of the journey of your own career.
[00:08:25.248] Tom Emrich: Yeah. I mean, let's go back to 2016. I think that's like another big wave of excitement with augmented reality. That's when we started to see Snapchat lenses, Pokemon Go, which again is from Niantic, ARKit, ARCore. And so there was a lot of excitement, Microsoft HoloLens around that time as well, around augmented reality. This actually happened to coincide with the excitement around virtual reality with Oculus in particular. I think at that time, what was interesting is that there was a lot of talk about headsets with augmented reality, especially because HoloLens had just hit the market. But actually, where the traction was, was on mobile. But yet, I was an investor at that time, investing in augmented reality very early bets. A lot of the investment activity was actually more on the headset side, more trying to go into this new type of device. And I think we saw that most of it fell on the VR side of the coin, not on the AR side. But really, the ability to reach the masses with this XR technology fell into the mobile bucket. But mobile wasn't new. The ability to use mobile for AR was new. And so that's what actually attracted me a lot to 8th Wall. Because in a time when a lot of the AR and VR companies were focusing on glasses and this new adoption of hardware, 8th Wall was focusing on the opportunity of mobile and transforming mobile into an augmented reality. machine, essentially. And I loved that because that meant reach and scale. And in addition, what 8thWall did was they turned the browser into a powerful place for augmented reality. So not only did they tackle the reach and scale of a device that everybody had, but they were also trying to move away from applications, which also made it difficult to get that adoption. So that's when I started working on product with Eric Murphy-Katorian, who's the CEO and founder. And it was really exciting to see so many brands embrace this WebAR technology and use it for some really fascinating use cases. Anything from integrating it as part of their site for e-commerce, like Saatchi Art did, to bringing products to life, like many of the wine companies did, or even try to use it to allow for virtual sales of vehicles, for example. So there were a plethora of case studies. I think that's actually That time is what really inspired me to want to write the book because I was so close to it. And then, of course, 8th Walk got bought by Niantic, which allowed for us to do even more things, including really branch into location-based augmented reality through their powerful visual positioning system. And again, there are a lot of activity still within the brand space, but starting to see other developers wanting to play with that in different ways. So for me, mobile AR, I spent a lot of time in it. And I still am really bullish on how much more we can see with mobile AR. But that's really where the reach and scale is. So as a business, if you're looking to tap into that, that's where we are today. But it's going to change as we move into the headset space tomorrow.
[00:11:25.495] Kent Bye: And so, is most of what you're covering in your book consumer-facing, or are there other use cases of augmented reality in an enterprise context that you're going into? Just curious to hear about some of the different industry verticals that you're focusing in on in your book.
[00:11:37.401] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I would say it's not an enterprise book. It has three main things that it's trying to break down. What's happening in marketing, what's happening in advertising, what's happening in sales. Okay, maybe I'll take that back. In the sales section, I do talk a little bit about how mixed reality headsets is changing what team members are doing within retail environments. So I think that's probably the closest to enterprise. How we're upskilling individuals, how we're training individuals. So there's a lot of work that's being done there. I think it's great that you're bringing up the enterprise because we don't hear a lot of stories from the enterprise. I don't think that's a surprise. There's a lot of NDAs and red tape to tell stories. But when folks come to me and say, you know, XR has been kind of quiet or, you know, there's a lot of noise and activity and then we're not hearing a lot about it. To me, that means it's gone to work, you know. And when you walk the AWE floor and you get to talk to people that are working in various enterprise pockets, you hear like what they're up to. And one of the clearest things that they tell you about is the ROI in the business case is there. And that's exciting. So I'd love to hear more enterprise stories. They're not always the sexiest stories, of course. But the sexy part is in the numbers. And that's where the proof is in the pudding.
[00:12:48.939] Kent Bye: Yeah, there was a researcher from the IEEE VR community named Dustin Chertoff who was looking at experiential marketing as a way of expanding out how we think about presence research. And so if you look at immersive theater and other types of immersive and experiential advertising that we see at different pop-ups that come up or at places like South by Southwest or Comic-Con, there seems to be a lot of these different threads towards experiential advertising. But curious to hear some of your thoughts of how augmented reality is fitting into maybe some of these larger trends towards experiential and immersive in the context of advertising.
[00:13:23.419] Tom Emrich: I love that. I mean, I talk a little bit about how the era of spatial computing is colliding with the age of experience, which we're seeing. There was a really good study, I think, by Experian that said, and don't quote me, but it was like 65% of Gen Z and 58% of millennials would rather spend money on concerts and travel and experiences than save for retirement. I think like folks are really craving connection and memory making with each other. And I think the best place to see where the new third place is, which is like a place where people come outside of work or school or home that is allowing for these experiences to happen is in gaming right now, right? And that's in these virtual worlds like Roblox and Fortnite. And what's great about AR and VR is that they're experienced mediums. And so at a time when we're seeing that Gen Z and millennials are already looking to use virtual places to connect and create memories, and they're looking to prioritize that above everything else, AR and VR is coming just at the moment to allow for them to create new memories, new experiences, and be able to do it in a much more present way than they are with Roblox and with Fortnite. And so I think, A, I think that they are experienced mediums coming at the right time. And then talking specifically about experiential marketing, I mean, I think that's where marketing is moving, right? But experiential marketing can be quite costly, like the build to do so, like to actually create an experience like for IP is like quite costly. It's not scalable, right? You're doing it like here at a conference or doing it at like a, headquarters, or a pop-up, and you have to abide by physics. And so if you're doing things for an IP, like Game of Thrones, to actually have a dragon flying around is like, that's a lot of money, if at all possible. So I think what's really interesting about VR, but also especially about mixed reality, is that you can scale that. You can bring it to people's houses. And if you don't want to scale it, you can actually leverage the location, but do things that you would never be able to do before. And the bonus of doing experiential marketing with XR is that you control the adoption of your experience because you're bringing the consumer to the device and you don't have to rely on them having that device at home if you're doing that type of campaign.
[00:15:37.824] Kent Bye: think a lot of times when you have marketers or other people in business decisions they have to make a decision as to where to spend money and there is an adage in marketing where you know something around the lines of like we know that it works we could probably cut half the budget we just don't know what half to cut and so there's a way in which that you invest in marketing and you know it's working as more you do it but getting like clear metrics of success can be difficult. And so as you start to look at in the context of augmented reality and business growth or in marketing, then what's the story that you tell in terms of proving the value of this medium and what it can do and what numbers should people be looking at?
[00:16:15.165] Tom Emrich: Okay, I have a good case study I'm gonna talk about, but before we move on, experiential marketing, out of home, things that are physical that have been very hard to measure are gonna be much more measurable because we're digitizing the physical with augmented reality. And that's like really cool. On the flip side, we're actually bringing a physicality to the digital experience, and that's where e-commerce comes in. And I think a standout use case for augmented reality is in e-commerce with virtual try-on and virtual try-out. Avon doubled down on the use of augmented reality on their website. They now allow for over 400 other makeup and beauty products to be tried on your face with augmented reality. And they, again, don't quote me exactly on the numbers, but loosely they reported that they saw a 320% increase in conversion because of this. And they also reported really good metrics on the number of products that were viewed and also a higher cart size because of this. And this is one of many case studies and data points, especially within the e-commerce space. So for me, augmented reality, this is not even a headset, by the way. This is on your phone. This is on desktop. It is really proving to allow for purchase to happen. On e-commerce, it makes sense because although e-commerce allows you to access seemingly an infinite amount of inventory, the lack of physicality, it decreases buyer confidence and it increases return rate. What augmented reality can do is solve for that. It can bring a physicality to this flat digital experience. Yeah.
[00:17:45.023] Kent Bye: And what are some of the other data points or case studies that you have in your book that are also proving out the utility of augmented reality?
[00:17:52.046] Tom Emrich: Another one that I just remembered off the top of my head is this really great experience from Bu Digital Agency in Brazil. And this use case is taking what's on screen in a commercial and bringing it into the homes of the viewer. And so they worked with Bradesco, which is a bank. in Brazil and they had a commercial that was filmed during the Voice Brazil. It was a really cute 3D Firefly commercial. So again, just traditional media. And they paired it up with a QR code on screen where the viewer would scan, use WebAR powered by 8th Wall and bring the Fireflies into their home. So this is like a really magical moment where you're now like part of the experience. And that's what augmented reality is really good at. It causes the consumer or the viewer to be a co-creator. So they have a sense of ownership and agency within this. And Boo Digital had a case study on the 8th wall site. I think it was something like 250,000 plus users simultaneously using this in the first three minutes. But the big kicker was that they saw extended engagement hours after the three-minute commercial to double or actually triple that amount of usage by the time it fizzled out. And so what I love about that is that the brand buys a three-minute spot or whatever it was, 30-second spot, but they have expanded engagement with viewers, whether it's on social media or continue to play in the home afterwards. And it was a really great way to be able to get really up close with IP at the same time. Yeah.
[00:19:16.843] Kent Bye: Nice. And you had mentioned that you spent some time at Meta. What were you working on at Meta in terms of AR?
[00:19:21.384] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I was working actually on the MetaQuest developer ecosystem. Specifically, my focus was on developer success. And they are thinking through the entire developer journey, a lot of work on onboarding and education, as well as helping developers get into the app store. So a lot of resources, a lot of tooling. And it was really great to continue my work on really supporting the developer ecosystem, because I had done the same at 8th Wall and then also Niantic. And developers are really what makes us all be successful, this ecosystem. Without content, there isn't anything to use the devices for. And so to be able to champion developers, think about the success of developers, I never took it for granted how amazing it was to be part of that.
[00:20:07.691] Kent Bye: And maybe you could talk a bit about why now in terms of going indie and creating your own company, consulting company. What was behind that decision and what's happening in the larger ecosystem that made you realize that you wanted to do something different?
[00:20:20.856] Tom Emrich: Well, I'm excited to go back on my own. I really love being able to have touchpoints and be of help in many different ways. That's kind of the first thing. But I did see a gap in the market where the storytelling of what's happening in the space has been very vertically focused. So a lot of AR and VR or a lot of robots and a lot of, you know, Gaussian splatting. But I hadn't seen like one destination that was starting to piece those all together. One thing that has become really clear now that I've been talking to more companies is that the aisles of VR and AR are starting to cross with those that are in robotics and digital twins. And so I think the time is now to really shine a light on that convergence and allow for people outside the industry to see how the pieces are starting to connect and converge. That's why I launched Remix Reality was really just to allow for all of those stories to be in one place and start to connect the dots and help investors and builders and interested parties make sense of it all.
[00:21:21.766] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'm seeing a little bit more robots than I've seen in the past. I know there have been telepresence robots and probably robots here for a long time. But since you've been involved with helping to produce and put on the Augmented World Expo, just curious to hear some of your thoughts of some of the trends that you're seeing here on the floor and what the current zeitgeist is.
[00:21:37.881] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you 100%, Ken. I'm seeing a lot more robots. I'm trying to determine are these robots here for marketing or are they here for the solution? So that's like one thing to note. You know, it made me think about AWE and I want to say it was like AWE 2017 or 2018 where Ori and I adopted a telepresence robot solution for those that were not there are able to get to the physical event. And I was just thinking about that today and how like, where are the telepresence robots? Because, you know, it seems like robots are getting much more powerful. It was a really cool idea to be able to feel more present and kind of bump, literally bump into people as a basically like a iPad with zoom on wheels. That's kind of what it was at the time. So I would definitely say the robots seem to be quite new. I think you're tripping upon AI here and the combination of AI and XR. And I love that this year, AWE has really shone a light on gaming. Their gaming hub is really new. So I think it's allowing for more content to have a space. And content's kind of hard to show in an expo. Everybody wants to see a gadget. And so having that here has been really helpful. Yeah, so I have a lot more to walk on the floor, but those are some initial things that I saw.
[00:22:50.059] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the other things that I, I guess people always ask me what the story of this, what my take is, and I think part of it also is that it feels like a new cycle with the beginning of the smart glasses era. We've had the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, but we have more and more competitors coming into the space, and yeah, just more talk in terms of Is this going to be the platform to start to add more and more augmentation onto the form factor of the smart glasses? Rather than having the bulky headset and then try to miniaturize it down, you're starting with something that is already really miniature and maybe offload the compute onto a puck. And so that also seemed to be a big trend. And just curious to hear some of your thoughts and how you make sense of this convergence point of the new smart glasses platforms as well as all the AI that's also being thrown about.
[00:23:35.137] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I mean, I love that Google and Qualcomm are talking about the different categories under head-worn wearables. I think that's really important. I think one of the big aha moments for many might be that there isn't just one glasses to rule them all. That's not what it's going to be. And probably that's not going to be the case ever. I think the fact of the matter is that we're starting to see two tracks emerge with head-worn wearables. One that's more like replacement eventually for PCs and laptops. These are the mixed reality headsets like MetaQuest and Vision Pro. These are spatial computers and they're going to be really powerful and most likely we may need to continue to have very powerful devices that are at home that can do a lot more things. If you think about it, that's what's happening right now. You still have a laptop, you still have a computer. Why? Because it can do things that are much more power dependent than a smartphone and it has a larger screen, right? Those are the reasons. On the flip side, you have another category, the smart glasses category. There, I think like you're starting to see like a number of different devices emerge at the same time. You have some with display, you have some with true AR, you have some that are just audio AI enabled glasses. I'm most excited about the AI enabled glasses. And the reason for that is because I think that's a really good entry point for the consumer. I think it allows for the glasses to feel like glasses, be lighter, more comfortable. And it's more of a baby step because I think it's going to be really hard to get people that don't wear glasses to wear glasses. I really do. And so I'm excited about Meta Ray-Ban and also the announcement that Warby Parker and Gentle Monster made. I think having these fashion brands involved is also key. But in terms of the eventual smart glasses morphing with the mixed reality headsets and then we just have one device, I don't know. For me right now, I'm thinking these are the two new devices that are going to be in our life. Yeah, that's how I'm kind of making sense of it.
[00:25:27.948] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of augmented reality and spatial computing mixed with AI in there as well and what that might be able to all enable?
[00:25:38.283] Tom Emrich: Okay, so I'm really excited about being in this space because I think it's going to allow for us to evolve as humans. I have this theory that we are 3D creatures, and by finally unlocking our ability to manipulate 3D, we can move to like a 4D, 5D plane from a spiritual and kind of thinking perspective. This might be a little bit more out there than the marketing side that we're talking about, but that's kind of how I feel. I feel like this technology is going to play a role in how we see the world, again, because it manipulates perception and reality. And my hope is that it will really deduce what is human, what are we all about, and how can we make the world a better place and a better experience. So that's why I'm here.
[00:26:19.043] Kent Bye: Anything else left inside, you'd like to say, of the broader immersive community?
[00:26:21.857] Tom Emrich: Yes, I want to say thank you to Kent because capturing our voices, capturing our stories for so long is just a Herculean endeavor. And you've been so consistent and committed. And so thank you. And I'm glad this will exist.
[00:26:39.096] Kent Bye: Yeah, and thank you for all your blogging and chronicling this sector of augmented reality for so long as well and all your work that you've done throughout your career. And yeah, looking forward to diving into your book and digesting all these remixing of reality and kind of where this is all going here in the future. So I always appreciate your take on the industry. And yeah, just really great to hear all the latest trends and hear what your next bold move is going to be here in the space. So yeah, thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the voices of your podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a, this is part of podcast. And so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
