21 Feb VR and AR: attractive but struggling to find traction in Marketing World
VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) present the holy grail for marketers: complete or enhanced immersion in their video story. But a 2017 study published in PR Newswire found that only 8% of marketers are currently using VR, and only 7% are using AR.
Users love VR and AR, but right now the application of these technologies is limited almost exclusively to gaming and entertainment. It’s unclear when they’ll be useful – or available – to more than just a very small percentage of marketers.
These technologies have great potential as marketing tools, because of their immersive nature and the excitement they generate. It’s just a matter of figuring out how best to use them.
Facebook is already working on it, and has created a social media VR team in collaboration with VR headset maker Oculus to integrate VR technology onto its platform. And while Oculus is higher-end equipment, it’s a good bet that Facebook has no interest in keeping VR unavailable to most of its users because of equipment cost.
In the future, look for VR and AR to be more than just niche entertainment.
But for now, VR and AR are not relevant to most marketers.