‘That day I claimed the name Meta because I wanted to be the first to introduce the metaverse, now I want to be the first to introduce mixed reality ads.’
Facebook owner, Meta Platform Inc told the advertising agency that mixed reality (MR) advertising will be a reality soon, thus giving a clear signal about the vision in creating the metaverse.
Before that, it is better if we learn briefly what MR is.
The public knows about Augmented Reality (AR), a technology that adds reality by displaying objects on environments like Pokemon Go games, and Virtual Reality (VR), a technology that replaces reality by taking its users to other environments such as PayStation -owned VR devices.
For MR, it is a combination of the use of physical world objects and triggering reactions in the virtual world such as the use of Microsoft's 'HoloLens' that allows users to manipulate and interact with holograms.
Turning to the news about Meta wanting to introduce MR advertising, an executive who attended a virtual meeting through Zoom with Meta said the company was helping advertising agencies to better understand the metaverse.
He added that Meta is in the process of creating a device that allows MR advertising to be realized and it is expected to be released this year.
For the record, last October at Connect’s annual conference, Meta announced Project Cambria which is a headset that will feature MR capabilities including face and eye tracking.
It is not the first project involving MR, where Microsoft has long applied the use of MR through HoloLens but it is not commercialized and is only used in the office for now.
In addition, Meta also advised advertising agencies to experiment with AR ads such as displaying pictures and videos that overlay digital images into the physical world or collaborating with content creators on AR ads.
Judging from the developments that Meta is trying to bring, it clearly shows that Meta is serious in realizing the vision to create a metaverse world.
Meanwhile, at the meeting, Meta did not explain any details on the ad formats that can be built for the metaverse, or any specific controls to prevent any brand from appearing in the view of unwanted content.
Furthermore, Meta also did not provide any details on how the effectiveness of ads in the metaverse will be measured or how it can benefit advertisers.
So far there have been no further comments by Meta on the matter.
