Google has been at the forefront of the latest push for VR as a platform, and now they’re beginning to look at how to monetise it with Area 120, Google’s internal workshop showing off ads for VR.
As an ad company, Google is well versed in how to present ads, and they’re even trying to do it responsibly as they’ve done previously through their membership of the Coalition for Better Ads. Google says they’ve taken feedback from users and developers on board who want ads that aren’t disruptive or hard-to-implement.
Google has said that:
VR ad formats should be easy for developers to implement, native to VR, flexible enough to customize, and useful and non-intrusive for users.
As an example, they’ve shown off an example of a VR ad in cube format that allows users to interact with it if they wish, or ignore it. Once tapped on, or ‘gazed at’ for a few seconds, the cube opens a video player that can display content or be closed easily by the user.
As an ad format, it looks fairly clunky, but then again this is new territory and in its cube form factor it’s not overly obtrusive when in VR. We’ll be seeing a lot more ads in the future in VR if it’s really going to take off, so stay tuned.
