A company called OmniVirt says it is helping publishers like The New York Times improve the discovery of virtual reality-style ads with technology that lets them host 360-degree video creative using their own site inventory, rather than relying on an external app.
Brands testing out the concept on the NYT include Infiniti, which had an ad on the newspaper’s home page that let readers tap and move an image around in 360 degrees. GE, meanwhile, had a similar kind of ad that ran on the NYT mobile site.
While there is more to VR than 360-degree video, OmniVirt’s technology is a mechanism for publishers that want to offer a more dynamic experience for brands without the risk of few people seeing it. The NYT, for instance, has a NYTVR app, but the ability to host 360-degree video across its desktop, mobile and tablet editions is an obvious advantage.
“The biggest challenge has been around technological limitations in terms of having to create a special VR app. When they then have to put that in a limited distribution option, it makes it difficult to justify the investment,” Michael Rucker, the firm’s co-founder and COO, told Marketing.
Publishers can either use OmniVirt’s player and use it on their site or run its software on its ad server, so there’s no software development kit (SDK) or other major technical hoops to jump through, Rucker said.
OmniVirt can also offer specific analytics to show publishers and brands a frame-by-frame look at how a 360-degree video ad performed, and how far they made it through the content. “That can provide a feedback loop for the creative process,” he added. “Did they look right, did they look left, or did they look up?”
Rucker, who spent seven years at YouTube, said he’s seeing similar patterns emerge with VR advertising as he did with the early days of online video.
“There were a ton of these brands who said, ‘Can I use my 30-second TV commercial (on YouTube)? It just didn’t work,” he said. More promising are the vertical markets where brands are creating unique 360-degree video content. These include entertainment (“Every single movie studio is creating a 360 trailer,” he said), automotive and the travel industry.
Besides the NYT, OmniVirt — which was formerly known as AdOptimal — says it is also working with AOL, Twitter and several other brands. It will also work with brands directly and even helps create VR ads for companies that don’t have them.
