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Meta ties AR closer to its ads offering
The Immersive Wire - 8 May 2023 (Monday Briefing)
Tom Ffiske
May 08, 2023
Executive summary
Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:
Headline: Meta pitches AR Reels Ads to its advertisers (analysis below).
Incubator: Future of Film is looking for applicants, including those who specialise in XR.
Stat of the week: Almost half of UK consumers think the metaverse will become widely used in the next 10 years, according to KPMG.
Conversation-starter: Rats have been proven to move objects in virtual reality.
Other stories: Alibaba opens a ‘metaverse launchpad,’ Meta’s Gaming Showcase is coming early in June, and Unity is laying off 600 people (more below).
While watching the Coronation, my friends and I joked about what stats the rods and swords would bestow on Charlies III. As a whole package it would give +5 Charisma and -5 Dexterity. Naturally, the items would respawn when the player gets defeated.
Analysis
Meta pitches AR Reels Ads to its advertisers.
What is it? AR is coming to Reels and Facebook Stories, having been used across its Feeds portfolio (think Facebook feeds where local communities complain about neighbours). According to its data, “these ads drove incremental ad recall with the 18- to 24-year-old demographic 87% of the time, outperforming non-AR-enabled ads.”
Why is this important? Two reasons. One, Meta is competing more directly with TikTok and Snap via AR, the latter of which reported 250m daily active users who use it. Two, it also shows the importance of using AR to bring people in. Immersive technologies have a tangible impact on casual browsers - myself included when I spot an entertaining filter. Meta is matching its innovations in Reality Labs with its core revenue base, which should improve performance for advertisers.
What’s the potential problem? As always, quality is important. I’ve seen plenty of great AR experiences across Snap, TikTok and Meta, but not all hit the mark. That comes down to a good creative vision and a heartful approach, which advertisers should consider.
Other notable stories
Got any stories? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.
Alibaba opens a ‘metaverse launchpad.’
DEPT brought AR to King Charles III’s coronation, in partnership with BBC’s Children in Need and the Royally Big Portrait.
Fast Travel Games announced that strategic VR puzzle shooter We Are One will officially launch on 1 June.
Meta’s Gaming Showcase is coming early in June.
Motive.io has been selected for the Chevron Technology Ventures Catalyst program.
Runiverse launched its app on ESL.
Unity is laying off 600 people.
Help corner
Need some assistance from other readers? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.
Headonists, a UK-based XR community, is looking to compile XR-related events within a single calendar. The calendar itself can be found here, and the submission is here.
Lowpass is a new newsletter run by Janko Roettgers, who wrote a multitude of XR-related exclusives at Protocol. Check it out here.