VR’s Future Still ‘Unknown,’ Says IAB Report on Its Advertising Potential
For those watching for the emergence of virtual reality and experienced the “rise and fall” of 3D video, “it’s natural to feel uncertainty about both where things are with VR today, and where they might be heading,” said an Interactive…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Ad Bureau report Monday on VR’s potential as an advertising medium. IAB's report views 2016 as a “watershed year” for VR because the technology is “finally achieving mass scale,” as VR experiences “are expanding beyond the hardcore gaming community and into everyday mobile and desktop browsers via 360 video,” it said. But the future of VR “is still very much unknown,” it said. “Existing hurdles may fall, but new ones may arise,” it said. “VR could scale faster than ever, or fade into flash-in-the-pan obscurity. That said, the predictions of those involved in VR today trend positively.” Corporate “high-level views” of VR indicate companies will pour “continued investment, development, and testing” resources into VR technology over the next two years,” the report said. “It’s expected that 24 months from now, we’ll have a much better understanding of the four or five key use cases around how and why consumers will use VR, versus what they do on their phones, iPads, TVs, and everything else.” VR’s potential for immersive storytelling, shopping and product demos are among the technology’s strong suits, said the report, based on interviews with executives at AOL, Google, The New York Times and other companies active in VR. A danger is that there’s also an “extraordinary level of hype” surrounding VR that may unnecessarily raise consumers’ expectations, making it harder for companies to wow the public with new VR products and services, it said.