(suspenseful music plays, drone buzzes)
- [Narrator] It's Friday.
You come home after a busy week at work.
You turn down the lights and
plug in to the metaverse.
Now you're meeting up with
Kyle for a quick match
of Hollow Space, and your
heart rate and pupil dilation
indicates you're tired,
but hey, you promised him
one quick match, right?
As Haven is loading, an ad pops up.
- [Ad Narrator] Tired?
Try the Blutech mattress,
infused with netotech AI that adjusts
to your sleeping pattern.
Get the best night of sleep every night!
- [Narrator] Skip ad.
Skip ad.
Skip ad.
What's up Kyle.
- Ah, the dreaded "A"
word, advertisements.
Over the next few years as the
entertainment industry shifts
to the headset, we're going
to see a secondary shift,
a shift that will bring both
annoyance and innovation
to one of the biggest technical
switchups in human history.
This is the future of advertisement.
(funky music)
Now we're all familiar with catered ads.
Sometimes they're helpful,
other times they're annoying,
but one thing's for
certain, as we enter the age
of virtual reality, we're
going to see more and more
advertisements in our beloved headsets.
In fact, it's already begun.
Companies like VirtualSKY
and Omnivirt are established
agencies to create ads
specifically for VR content.
But don't get me wrong, it's not all bad.
Now VirtualSKY provides
customers with two types of ads
I'm sure we're all familiar with.
The 5-10 second ad before
the content, what they call
sponsored ads and their experience ads.
Those play during natural
breaks in the VR content,
say in between levels in a game.
Omnivirt, on the other hand,
provides a platform for 360
video and VR content to be
distributed across a multitude
of platforms: YouTube, Facebook,
SnapChat, Twitter, etc.
Now of course the questions
at hand isn't how the ads are
distributed, or the fact
the advertisement will make
its way into VR.
The questions are one:
How is the ad actually?
And two: How does the ad mesh
with the experience it's integrated in?
Now before we go any further, we have
to make the distinction
between 360 ads and VR ads.
Now 360 ads are simply 3D
videos that can appear anywhere,
while VR ads are advertisements
specifically featured
with enhanced experience.
So you can actually walk around
those ads or experiences.
Another distinction between
ad types: is it over the top?
Product, product, product
type ad like Flexseal?
Or something that goes
deeper into storytelling,
like Apple's infamous 1984.
Now Jaron Lanier, we've done
a video about him, the link
will be at the end of this video,
says that VR has the possibility
to be hijacked by those
that care only about making money.
If drawn to its logical conclusion,
this could create experiences similar
to Black Mirror's "Fifteen
Million Merits" episode where
to continue on you need to look
and finish the advertisement.
However, tremendous innovation can happen
because of the beyond.
One of these innovations will
be experiencing before buying.
In a world where information
is at our fingertips,
and companies find it harder
and harder to control the
narrative, consumers can do
their own research and figure
out exactly what they want,
and what the company is
giving to them.
So the next stage is, after
you've done your research,
you can hop into say, a virtual
market and pick up the new
iPhone Z and test it out for yourself.
Another huge innovation will be AI.
Back in May 2018, a leaked
internal video from Google
titled "The Selfish Ledger"
showed an idea that everyone
has a data ledger, where
all of our data is stored.
The more we do online,
the more data is created,
the finer-tuned, more precise
to us our ledger becomes.
The video paints a reality where
if you can't find a product
you're looking for, the
ledger could be used to design
the product that you'd be interested.
Now this paints both an
exciting and slightly terrifying
reality of advertisement and VR.
Now on one hand, we'll have
more control over the things
we buy digitally before buying physically.
On the other hands, do you
really want your movements
tracked for the purpose of advertisements?
So we find ourselves at
this shift, the shift
from 2D screens to actually being
in the worlds we're consuming.
For ads to be enjoyable, or at
the very least non-intrusive,
we have to look at what makes
ads great in the present.
We have to look at
♪til it's over♪
♪I'ma ride it til it's over♪
Okay, this is one of
my favorite ads of 2018
because one, it immediately
places you into a world,
a story that you have to figure out.
Two, it bends that world, it bends reality
in a different way.
And three, it only introduces the products
after it's won you over.
Now for ads to truly work in VR,
not only for the advertiser,
but for the person watching,
the ad must get the user invested
in the world it's trying to sell.
Like no one wants to stand
in a 3D video as a product is
plastered all over your face.
VR is a great technology and
its inevitable that any great
technology will be used by companies
to showcase their product.
That's just how it goes.
But by being aware of this
shift before it happens, we can
begin to plan ahead, and
hopefully, create a future where
infomercials are a thing of
the past and catered, immersive
experiences that just happen
to be showcasing a product
are in the future.
(upbeat music)
Hey, thanks for watching!
We've got a growing community
of VR friends over at Discord.
Click the link to join.
