A few months ago in May of this year, Facebook announced that it would begin testing ads in virtual reality. Now, these tests have finally begun.
According to Michael Tan from PCMag:
“The company revealed it’s going to begin experimenting with the ads in the Oculus Quest title Blaston from Resolution Games. The experiment will also expand to two other unnamed developers in the coming weeks,”
Facebook calls these advertisements “in-headset ads” and are another way they are trying to expand their revenue. In the blog, they said that “This is a key part of ensuring we’re creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences.”
In the announcement blog, Facebook outlined the privacy policies for Oculus ads:
- We do not use information processed and stored locally on your headset to target ads. Processing and storing information on the device means it doesn’t leave your headset or reach Facebook servers, so it can’t be used for advertising.
- We take extra precautions around the use of movement data like minimizing what we need to deliver a safe and immersive VR experience and we have no plans to use movement data to target ads.
- We do not use the content of your conversations with people on apps like Messenger, Parties, and chats or your voice interactions to target ads.
The company says that they are planning to monitor user interaction with VR ads. Users will be able to use controls that they can hide either specific ads or ads from entire advertiser.
Source – Search Engine Land