Retailers Can Deploy AR Shopping Experiences Using Vertebrae’s New Axis Platform

Having started out as a virtual reality (VR) advertising technology platform, Vertebrae, has continued investing in immersive technologies, announcing a new augmented reality (AR) commerce platform for retailers called Axis.

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It can be an expensive process embracing new technologies, which can mean some industries see greater deployment than others. Retailers have taken tentative steps into the fields of VR and AR, with the likes of Amazon and Ikea employing AR into their mobile apps.

Looking to make that process easier – and more viable for smaller companies – Vertebrae has developed Axis so that retailers can transform their existing site with 3D and AR experiences that allow customers to fully visualize and try out any number of virtual products as they research and buy.

“As virtual experiences move into the mainstream, retailers can no longer afford to approach AR as a novelty or one-off experiment,” said Vince Cacace, founder and CEO of Vertebrae in a statement. “The key to success is to meaningfully integrate AR into the commerce experience to drive conversion and sales and ensuring AR is available to any shopper, on any device, anywhere they want to shop – not simply on an app. The Axis platform simplifies the delivery of high-fidelity 3D assets within existing e-commerce environments, giving consumers new levels of confidence in their purchasing decisions.”

Vertebrae Axis Insitu

The platform makes it possible for users to create, manage, integrate and measure high-fidelity 3D assets at scale across their digital shopping environments.

“With Vertebrae and the Axis platform we’re now able to provide our customers with the ability to virtually try on hats on our site – up close, at any angle, on their very own head,” said Carson Finkle, CEO at Tenth Street Hats. “Vertebrae’s technology solves the friction problem of requiring our customers to download an app in order to have an AR product experience, and handles the hard work of delivering AR to any device or operating system so that we can focus on delighting our customers.”

AR is proving to be an ever invaluable tool when it comes to modern consumer engagement. As more companies embrace the technology VRFocus will keep you updated.

Vertebrae Releases New SDK for Advertisers

Vertebrae Releases New SDK for Advertisers

Monetization is high on the list of priorities for VR. While tech companies and brands have started investing more in content creation, making money from that content remains an uphill battle.

But that monetization issue may now be on its way to being addressed. Vertebrae, which emerged from stealth in September 2016 with its $10 million Series A funding, has released a new SDK allowing developers to quickly unlock VR advertising opportunities.

The drag-and-drop SDK will allow developers to layer ads directly on top of a VR environment in a non-disruptive manner. This allows for more innovative ad placements to enter VR experiences as brands are natively inserted into the landscape. Veterbrae’s new SDK creates opportunities for more immersive advertising engagement with consumers, and thus, more potential for financial windfall on the part of developers (and the brands they work with).

As part of the new SDK rollout, Vertebrae will be working with developers to unlock numerous monetization options around the new ad placements. The company will work directly with publishers to create smart placement within Vertebrae’s VR ad network, and formalize a payout structure for developers and publishers based on impressions.

Among the ad formats now available with Vertebrae are in-VR 3D object product placement, gaze-based interactive 3D, and 360 pre-roll and interstitials. Vertebrae is also currently working with the IAB to define standards for the new advertising formats through which the entire VR/AR advertising industry takes shape.

The company’s tech was previously in private beta, but developers can now sign up for access to the SDK here.


This is a guest post not produced by the UploadVR staff. No compensation was exchanged for the creation of this content. Cortney Harding is an analyst at TVREV through which she has a working relationship with Vertebrae.

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Vertebrae Launches Advertising SDK for Native Implementation

Today, Vertebrae, the virtual reality (VR) advertising platform that secured $10 million USD in investment last year, has announced it’s leaving closed beta the the launch of its 1.0 software development kit (SDK).

The platform allows for native implementation into VR content, so that developers have more monetization options available to them. The system employs a drag-and-drop method making it easy to add content that’s immersive whilst not detracting from the experience. Brands and advertisers can then utilise VR to reach an even wider audience without being intrusive.

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Prior to launch VRFocus spoke with Vince Cacace, Vertebrae’s CEO about the platform and what it had to offer.

“We spent a good portion of last year figuring out what is the right user experience for an ad in VR, that can add to the realism of content, and add something exciting in a way where it’s not detracting from the value of the content, something you can’t escape, and how do you do that in a scalable way that also provides a mechanism for advertisers who’re connecting with consumers,” said Cacace, before then adding, “definitely don’t put in any 2D videos or banner ads in VR.”

When asked about this and the subject of Vertebrae’s unique offerings Cacace continued: “What we see a lot is people putting 2D videos into VR, or throwing banners into VR. We view VR as a completely new medium, and therefore we spent a lot of time developing and refining a native ad unit that works and performs really nicely from a user experience perspective. And I’d say that is by far and away our biggest differentiator, in that we are building units and formats that are true to the medium of VR, and presented in the right way as someone is navigating in a VR experience.”

But to do this effectively means melding VR developers with brands and advertisers and making the whole process as simple as possible. “Creating a good user experience for them [developers] to be able to download the SDK, drag and drop into their app, and then assign placements, categorize a little bit of information about those placements and let us handle the rest,” has been at the core of Vertebrae’s development states Cacace. “Which involves us having a direct relation with the brands and agencies which we’ve done a good job of aggregating over the last year, almost year and a half.”

“We’re creating something new, the way to do that with brands is to package it up into some terminology that they’re used to using but applying it to a new context. So for example, a lot of times we price things on the CPM model, but the CPM model isn’t necessarily the best way to price VR, its experimental, it’s more than just a little impression that gets incurred by the thousands, but it’s something a brand can wrap its head around.”

It’s not just VR that Vertebrae is keen on, on the augmented reality (AR) side the company is exploring several avenues: “We have some partnerships in the making with some location-based mobile VR content, and that’s a market we’re very excited about. We don’t have anything live, but we do have partnerships in the mobile AR space, and that’s definitely an area that has a lot of scale potential in the near term, as the full headset is market is growing so comes the VR and AR side.”

Any developers interested in signing up for the Vertebrae SDK can do so here. Vertebrae is also working alongside the IAB to help define standards for these new advertising formats as the industry grows. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Vertebrae and advertising in VR, reporting back with the latest announcements.

You Want It Darker: What the Tribeca Immersive Lineup Tells Us About the State of VR

You Want It Darker: What the Tribeca Immersive Lineup Tells Us About the State of VR

In recent months, a handful of speakers and leaders in the VR community have started positing that the medium can serve as a time capsule for future generations to interact with the current moment in a more interactive way, certainly besting those rotting boxes we buried in schoolyards in the eighties. If this does come to pass, and civilizations 50 years from now come across this year’s Tribeca Immersive pieces, they’ll think that 2017 was a very dark time, indeed. This year’s lineup, with 29 pieces in total, offers almost no respite from the worries of the world — but should it?

The first point, of course, is that context matters — Tribeca is a serious film festival overall, so keeping VR selections in the same vein makes sense. With that in mind, it’s always worth pointing out that the art form is still new, and for at least a chunk of the attendees will be their first experience with the technology. If someone comes to learn about VR, spends an hour jumping between headsets and witnessing devastation, and then leaves wanting to go home and cry, will they be excited to come and try VR again?

That being said, the lineup we have is what we have — and it breaks down into roughly three buckets. The first bucket is social and political content, firing up the old Chris Milk empathy machine. Interestingly, Milk’s pieces are some of the less intense ones in the lineup — The Possible: Hoverboard is a look at the creator of the Omni Hoverboard; Life of Us is a story of the Earth’s evolution; and Hallelujah is a VR experience of the Leonard Cohen track.

Aliens have destroyed everything and brainwashed your lover…and that’s one of the lighter pieces at this year’s Tribeca Immersive Virtual Arcade.

Also on display though will be the Last Goodbye, an interactive story of a Holocaust survivor touring a concentration camp; Becoming Homeless, where the viewer experiences the challenges of life without a home; and Step to the Line, about life inside a maximum security prison. All are worthwhile artistic endeavors, but it does beg the question of where viewers are supposed to go once the headset is off. This has been one of the biggest problems with socially conscious VR — if all the user does is experience something for a few minutes and then walk away relieved they aren’t in a refugee camp, it amounts to nothing more than tragedy porn. If the pieces can direct people to concrete actions and solutions (not an easy task) then they can accomplish something real and worthwhile.

The second bucket is narrative experiences, and these aren’t any more cheerful than the social and political content. Moth+Flame’s Remember Remember (full disclosure: I have consulted on projects for Moth+Flame but was not involved in the production of this piece) explores false memories and virtual gaslighting against a world-destroying alien invasion; Alteration tells to story of an AI experiment that turns out to be vampiric; Sword of Baahubali asks users to find a warrior’s sword and is based on a popular Indian film. With the exception of the last piece, most of the narratives explore loss and tragedy, again reflecting the dark mood of the creative community.

The third bucket is what I’ve dubbed experiential fantasy; it’s a bit of a catch-all term for experiences that fall outside the documentary or narrative realm but are still participatory. And again, even these have a menacing air — Boabab’s Rainbow Crow starts with carefree forest animals who realize their lives are in danger; Sergeant James explores whether the monsters under a child’s bed are real; and Bebylon Battle Royale imagines immortal babies attacking one another. It’s basically a chance to participate, at least virtually, in any number of dystopian fantasies that seem only less real than what’s happening on the streets outside.

Again, Tribeca is not representative of all VR pieces, and should be seen for what it is. But it’s also one of the most prestigious film festivals around, and what it tells us about the state of VR is that many creators are mirroring the current political and social mood — one of fear and mistrust.

Cortney Harding is a contributing columnist covering the intersection of VR and media. This column is an editorial product of TVREV, produced in partnership with Vertebrae, the native VR/AR ad platform.

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VR ad platforms now offer analytics

Virtual reality ad platforms continue to evolve, with vendors now offering analytics for advertisements placed inside 360-degree videos, virtual reality games, and other virtual experiences. Vendors are also trying to make the ads less...

VR Advertisement Platform Vertebrae Raises $10M Investment

Vertebrae, a virtual reality advertising platform that promises to bring ad supported monetization to VR publishers, today announced a $10 million series A fundraising.

Vertebrae’s platform, now out of stealth, is currently in private beta for use by content publishers such as entertainment studios, gaming companies, creative agencies, and brands that want to insert ads into their VR creations. The company didn’t specify who participated in the investment round.

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Vertebrae aims to deliver VR ads to both interactive rendered spaces and 360 video, including custom VR mini-games, branded image backgrounds, and content sponsorship.

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Vertebrae worked recently with Lionsgate to create a VR ad experience for the September 16th premier of the film Blair Witch (2016), according to Vertebrae the experience was designed to build intrigue and promote awareness that then drives people to theaters to watch the full-length film. The 90 second immersive ad was served as a pre-roll ad to the VR game Sisters, a VR horror title.

The post VR Advertisement Platform Vertebrae Raises $10M Investment appeared first on Road to VR.