Mobile advertising has entered the age of virtual reality. That much was clear Thursday morning in New York, as Airpush rolled into Advertising Week to unveil its virtual reality ad network.
Named VirtualSKY, the platform is Airpush’s latest attempt to move the needle in mobile advertising by introducing VR to premium advertiser experiences.
As tech behemoths like Facebook, Google, and Samsung step up to take virtual reality into the mainstream, Airpush is similarly doing its part within this pioneering parade. But is mobile advertising ready for virtual reality? Airpush thinks so.
“VirtualSKY has been designed from the ground up to deliver gorgeous, immersive, virtual reality advertisement experiences from the world’s top brands and advertisers into virtually any VR app,” the Los Angeles-based ad network explained in a news release.
Without question, Airpush is certainly looking in the right direction for a growth market. According to the latest industry estimates, VR is now expected to reach $4.7 billion in sales of software as soon as 2018.
Detecting an opportunity to satisfy a market need, Airpush set out to change the little-publicized fact that until now, there has been no scalable monetization solution for virtual reality developers to consistently generate revenue and, correspondingly, no way for advertisers to place ads inside of content.
So how does it work? Airpush asserts that its VirtualSKY platform overcomes two of the biggest thorns in the side of advertisers seeking to connect with the masses — slow load times and scalable inventory.
By using proprietary technology to eliminate the plodding pace customary with massive virtual reality files, Airpush promises that its new platform can deliver exceedingly fast, pre-cached streaming that practically rids load times from the mobile ad experience while also reducing skipping.
Additionally, the company is quick to point out that integrating with VirtualSKY is an uncomplicated task as it can be swiftly integrated into any VR app. And when you consider that Airpush already integrates into more than 150,000 mobile apps globally, it’s easy to see why the company is optimistic about VirtualSKY’s prospects to “expand at a rate that will bring campaign scale in line with other digital mediums faster than any other offering in the space.”
Taking a page from its popular decision earlier this year to extend to advertisers the opportunity to have their Abstract Banners customized by Airpush’s design team specialists at no extra charge, VirtualSKY advertisers will also have “dedicated access” to complimentary virtual reality design services, something that will allow for campaigns to be created and launched within a matter of days.
“Virtual Reality has received the endorsement and investment of virtually every major player in the tech industry,” says Cameron V. Peebles, Head of Global Marketing for VirtualSKY and Airpush. “From Google to Sony to Facebook, options for VR content development have exploded while any real monetization or advertising capabilities have yet to emerge. VirtualSKY is the first platform to offer both of these.”
To learn more about VirtualSKY, check it out here.
