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Agreed. The Oculus acquisition still has me scratching my head. I don't doubt that VR will be a major technology, if the Oculus manages to follow up on the prom

Agreed. The Oculus acquisition still has me scratching my head. I don't doubt that VR will be a major technology, if the Oculus manages to follow up on the promise of the DK. But it seems so very different to FB's current market and core competency. Where are the synergies? Display ads within VR? From the reaction of visceral disgust I've seen to ads on the apple watch, I can't see anyone putting up with them in the Oculus. Maybe they're keeping something Insanely Great up their sleeve, but from their total failure to do anything at all with whatsapp or instagram, I'm not hopeful.

roymurdock 11y ago
I think the nature of ads is fundamentally changing from clear-cut commercials and poorly-integrated pop ups towards product placement, PR/ad firm trend manufacturing, and "native content" - aka ads that read as serious articles without disclosure. It would be easy to make the best ads ever through VR. Sprinkle some coke bottles and billboards into whatever first generation games come out for Oculus. For immersion's sake, of course. Create a Coke Cafe where you can talk to your friends in a virtual environment for free. The best part? You don't have to pay for physical objects or real estate. Create a few models, pay the dev studio/Facebook, and you're done. Rather than being constrained by a screen (TV, computer, Apple Watch), VR ads could have so much room for creativity given a fully immersive and completely absorbing experience. And, just like Facebook and Snapchat have done to drive user growth, if we stay ahead of the adoption curve we probably won't see them until the tech is boring anyways. There's a fine line between great ads, games, movies, shows, etc. - they're all different forms of entertainment w/ different agendas and different reasons for existing, but if they entertain, that's all that matters at the end of the day.

roymurdock 11y ago

I think the nature of ads is fundamentally changing from clear-cut commercials and poorly-integrated pop ups towards product placement, PR/ad firm trend manufacturing, and "native content" - aka ads that read as serious articles without disclosure. It would be easy to make the best ads ever through VR. Sprinkle some coke bottles and billboards into whatever first generation games come out for Oculus. For immersion's sake, of course. Create a Coke Cafe where you can talk to your friends in a virtual environment for free. The best part? You don't have to pay for physical objects or real estate. Create a few models, pay the dev studio/Facebook, and you're done. Rather than being constrained by a screen (TV, computer, Apple Watch), VR ads could have so much room for creativity given a fully immersive and completely absorbing experience. And, just like Facebook and Snapchat have done to drive user growth, if we stay ahead of the adoption curve we probably won't see them until the tech is boring anyways. There's a fine line between great ads, games, movies, shows, etc. - they're all different forms of entertainment w/ different agendas and different reasons for existing, but if they entertain, that's all that matters at the end of the day.