• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, May 26, 2009 11 AM

Papa John's and the U.S. Postal Service are among companies trying out "Augmented Reality," or AR, in marketing campaigns. With AR, images held in front of Webcams result in holographic-like 3-D, writes Suzanne Vranica.

This week, the Postal Service debuts a "virtual box simulator" on its prioritymail.com site. The simulator allows consumers to hold an object in front of a Webcam and use the resulting 3-D image to determine the right size box for shipping the object.

Starting next month, Papa John's plans to affix an AR image to the back of 30 million pizza boxes. Customers can visit a special Web site, hold the image up to their Webcam, and then use their keyboard to drive an animated, 3-D car on the computer screen.

One potential drawback to AR: though the number of Americans who own a Webcam is increasing rapidly, only some 18% of the nation's broadband households had one as of April.

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