Retinad is building the first virtual reality advertising and analytic platform that will enable indie and established VR game and app developers to monetize through virtual advertisement within the virtual environment. Retinad platform also provides a powerful heatmap analytic to track user’s browsing, navigation, purchasing behavior, and results.
Heatmap has long been adopted by online marketers and researches to analyze consumer and human viewing and shopping behaviors! Now is time for VR to integrate the technology! VR advertisers can start collecting big data, because perhaps online and virtual reality audiences might react differently with advertising!
VR advertisers can track, monitor and analyze the analytic data and improve and change their AD strategy and placement accordingly, just like how online marketers use Google Adsense to monetize and Google Analytic to study visitors and buyers’ behaviors.
For me personally, I think Youtube Ads that were irrelevant to what I was viewing, and mobile pop-up Ads that were difficult to close or exit, and covered up my iPhone screen are extremely annoying, and I feel I am not the only one. Annoying Ads that pops up automatically simply don’t work! Money wasted and brand image could be damaged as well. Users today can be very impatient and easily agitated.
Retinad is doing it differently, as you can see in the demo videos, Retinad’s AD doesn’t stop users from enjoying their virtual experiences. Retinad ADs are very subtle and blend in naturally with the user’s field of view in the background. While I was watching the demo, I even had to deliberately look for the ADs!
Retinad’s virtual Ads would be in the forms of little flashing tab, image carousel, 360 video, image pop-up and banner. Which can be activated or triggered when users are looking at them. Which means users have direct and full control of whether or not they want to activate or interact with the virtual Ads.
Retinad VR has made it easy for virtual content developers to integrate with Retinad’s analytic and advertising platform. Developers would simply follow the tutorial video’s instruction to sign up for an account, install “Retinad VR Plugin” and start monetizing.
The virtual reality content, game and app developers have yet to find more monetization methods and business models to make their virtual content financially sustainable, and keep the VR ecosystem growing rapidly! Retinad virtual reality advertisement could be a viable business model in many forms, for example, displaying affiliate Ads based on commission, such as Clickbank.
In our opinion, the bottom line when presenting the virtual ADs is how not to annoy the users, providing them with full control of the navigation and interaction, while providing useful and relevant Ads that would add values and greatly enhance the user experience. Retinad VR’s platform private beta will launch soon, we will update if any news.
Image Source & Content Inspiration: Retinad & Road to VR
