Virtual Reality

As we go hurtling to the new and shiny things on the block (namely virtual reality and augmented reality), perhaps now would be a good time to take a step back and look at potential consequences of these technologies going mainstream and where advertising could come into play.

As with digital advertising, which, at the outset, claimed it would be the Holy Grail to marketers where everything worked seamlessly, sales would rise exponentially and everything would be measurable – well, as we all know, it hasn’t quite turned out like that – yet.

No one thought of the impacts it would have on the end user and everyone got a little bit greedy. So inevitably, people fought back with tools available to them, ad blocking as an example. We now have a situation where there are two types of web: blocked and unblocked – but that’s another blog altogether.

So what’s to stop the same thing happening with AR or VR? Those of you who have read the recent piece by my colleague, David Ellison, will understand the difference between the two. I’m specifically talking about VR whereby you put the goggles on and immediately you are transported to another environment – it all sounds great.