The case for advertising online is already a compelling one. And an increasing number of companies don’t need convincing — The Internet ad market last year grew 26%, surpassing both radio and cable TV, to reach $21.2 billion, according to the annual online ad spending report from IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
This week MTV showed combining their television show The Hills with an online 3D virtual world and a website, meaning users were far more engaged. Not only that, but their watchers who also visited the website and the virtual world had much more positive things to say about The Hills major sponsor Pepsi, according to the report. (See Adweek article ). Until now promotion across several platforms with digital media was suspected to work, but never proved.
Because ExitReality enables instant representation of every single social network page as an inhabitable 3D environment, when it launches soon ExitReality will instantly be the world’s largest 3D virtual world with more than 300 million 3D places. For advertisers, this represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promote their brands through the birth of a new medium.
Once launched, advertisers, publishers and users will be able to build, manage and freely participate in the growth of this medium. Pre-launch, we are offering select partners the opportunity to gain early access to our technology and the ability to deeply integrate within the platform itself.
ExitReality not only offers cross-platform promotion opportunities, but easy access to 3D advertising — Virtual goods have been built by ExitReality that support web ad feeds such as standard banner ad formats. These ad objects can be used by users to decorate their 3D page. A partner can have full control over which ads are displayed on these goods for visitors of their site’s domain. These ads are clickable just like normal web banner ads, so partners can make money through normal web advertising services.
From there the opportunities are endless: we are currently creating branded avatars, objects, decorations, buildings and places for our pre-launch partners.
With ‘giveaways’, businesses can spread their brand message. It’s all set up for viral distribution. A user takes a cool 3D object from a business space, puts it in their own 3D space then their friends and other visitors can take the object for their own page, and because ExitReality extends over all social networks, the object has the potential to appear everywhere. These objects can engage the user in many interactive ways, and can also link to a 2D webpage or 3D destination. The image right shows how giveaways work: 
Examples
- A musician in MySpace Music has a live performance space to interact with fans and organize virtual concerts, show music videos on a virtual television and give away songs in a 3D widget.
- A car company on Facebook has a 3D racetrack and give away a 3D car that users can make their color of choice then drive around in 3D. The car has a link back to the company’s website.
- A fashion designer with a 3D catwalk can host their own fashion shows and give away avatars wearing virtual versions of their own designs.
- A film or TV company’s 3D space is a cinema showing short films, trailers or television shows. They give away virtual popcorn to their moviegoers or a 3D plasma flat-screen television showing their latest offerings.
Which brands, advertisers or businesses do you think will be first? Please feel free to leave a comment below.
Sign up on http://www.exitreality.com/ for the beta or feel free to contact us to talk ideas and partnership opportunities.
Tags: 3D, Advertising, Branding, cross-promotion, ecommerce, Marketing, Promotion, Sponsorship, Virtual Worlds
May 23, 2008 at 3:32 am
There are a number of changes taking place Online at the moment.
Advertising is just one of these.
Searching for alternatives to Traditional Display and Text ads, we’ve seen many new formats being born. 3D Advertising is hotting up to be the next big thing.
May 28, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Just found you out from a TechCrunch link.
I was involved in a project called Mediadome back in 1999 that you may find interesting. It was a 3D browser that linked to WinAmp and showed web sites on video screens in a virtual nightclub. The web sites were linked to the music playing and the user was able to customise some of the screens with their own pages.
It was limited by the poor download speeds at that time, but interesting enough that we formed a joint venture with Intel.
We got over a million downloads and great click through rates on the adverting links. I also have a few screen shots and I believe you can still find the plug-in online.
We also started to look at 3D product placement, customised environments for companies and downloadable skins and motion capture so you can make you character dance differently (it used beat detection). All this contributed to a very loyal audience and a great viral distribution.
Sadly the dot com bubble killed most of the customers for the technology and it closed shop.
May 28, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Let me now when you have a Mac version. Parallels costs money and Bootcamp crashes Mac 10.4.
June 1, 2008 at 1:48 am
Would have been good if you offer FireFox3 Addon already, especially that FF3 is close to release.
With that said, I can’t test the product.
I guess thanks for the invite, will try again next time when FF3 addon is available.
Best of luck ^_^
June 1, 2008 at 4:28 am
I installed exitreality but when it tells me to get the upgrade it goes to a blank page. Can somebody help me out? the page will say hp 404, then it will go to a search engine saying it cant find the url.
June 6, 2008 at 5:59 pm
My name is Michael Dennios Smith. I would like to have a partnership. I have ideas on things like a full-3D social network, 3D media sharing site, 3D web browser, and an application that would turn the net into a full-fledged 3D video game. Contact me at:
webmaster [at] mds55 [dot] zzn [dot] com