Outlyer Technologies’ Advrtas brings ads to virtual reality

Virtual reality is the next frontier for … advertising.

Outlyer Technologies is announcing its Advrtas platform today, which enables the creation of interactive ads in virtual reality. The ad technology enables the development and distribution of fully interactive 360-degree advertising. Since VR is expected to be a huge new gaming, media, and entertainment platform, the $77 billion digital ad industry is itching to come up with ways to create ads for the medium.

Brands, publishers, and agencies can use Advrtas to build “immersive, rich, and fully interactive ad experiences using video, graphics, photo-real images” as computer animation, the company said.

Advrtas is more than a video player. With its patent-pending Panamorphic technology, it enables brands to serve 360-degree and virtual reality ad content across any Internet Advertising Bureau-compliant rich media ad space. It breaks the boundaries of the traditional ad frame, can be navigated using motion, and provides significantly more ad real estate for the same buy thanks to the 360 design.

Above: Advrtas brings ads to virtual reality.

Image Credit: Outlyer Technologies

Advrtas ads are designed to work across smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops, engaging audiences wherever they are. From their smartphones, viewers can control their ad experience by the simple movement of their phone to navigate through any visual scene, and can click into different products or scenarios, all the way to points of sale. It also offers a VR mode with the click of a button, viewable on both Android and iOS phones using any cardboard or comparable VR headset.

The possibilities are huge. You can scroll through a sample ad to view the entire Las Vegas Strip, and then click on ads that take you into hotel lobbies, guest rooms, and restaurants. You can look around, book rooms, or make reservations from within the ad.

Car shoppers can also move around outside and inside a car. Grocery shoppers can view an entire store, cruise down the aisles, and check out ingredient lists. Then they can order products for delivery.

A swimsuit brand could create an underwater virtual retail shop, where users swim through coral reefs alongside sea life.

“As a company that has been living in the virtual reality content and technology space for several years, it occurred to us – why can’t we bring this level of interactivity to the existing digital infrastructure, where people are today,” said Robert Bruza, founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based Outlyer Technologies, in a statement. “We’ve created a technology that, among other things, leverages WebGL, HTML5, and mobile sensors enabling us to bring an immersive and fully interactive experience that brands and consumers have never seen before to any ad space.”

Outlyer has 10 employees and was founded in 2014.