Tag: HTC

HTC Debuts VR Ad Service That Tracks Head Movements To Count Views

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
If an ad is placed nearby but no one actually turned around to see it, does it still count? HTC aims to solve this good ol’ ad visibility issue in virtual reality with a new VR ad service it introduced at the 2017 VIVE Ecosystem Conference. The VR Ad Service will make it easier for developers to integrate a number of ad styles into their games hosted on Viveport, the company’s digital distribution platform. It uses the headset’s integrated head tracking technology to track whether the users have actually seen them or turned away their gaze, and therefore determining ad revenues based on verified impressions.

What Brands Need To Do
This new ad product for HTC’s platform points to the future of accountable VR advertising, incentivizing VR developers with a solid monetization tool to produce engaging content and games for its Viveport platform. For brands, this opens up a valuable channel that they can leverage to explore immersive ads in virtual reality and start figuring out what kind of creatives draws most eyeballs.

How We Can Help
Our dedicated team of VR experts is here to guide marketers through the distribution landscape. We work closely with brands to develop sustainable VR content strategies to promote branded VR and 360 video content across various apps and platforms. With our proprietary technology stack powered by a combination of best-in-class VR partners and backed by the media fire-power of IPG Mediabrands, we offer customized solutions for distributing and measuring branded VR content that truly enhance brand messaging and contribute to the campaign objectives.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Lab can help you tap into the immersive power of VR content to engage with customers, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: RoadtoVR

Mobile World Congress 2016: Virtual Reality Becomes A Step Closer To Reality

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On the first day of the 2016 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, several brands eagerly shared news about their latest development in virtual reality.

The HTC Vive, which made its big debut at MWC last year, returns with an official $799 price tag,a preorder date of February 29th, and an early April ship date. HTC also announced that its Vive headset will integrate some phone functions on both iOS and Android to allow users to answer calls, check text messages, and view calendar reminders without removing the headset. Similarly, LG is also making its entry into the burgeoning VR market with a pair of new products: the lightweight and compact LG 360 VR headset and the LG 360 CAM for capturing spherical photos and video. LG partnered with Google for easy sharing of videos to YouTube 360 and photos can even be uploaded right to Google Street View.

Samsung also returned to Barcelona with an aggressive push for its Gear VR headsets. The company made the consumer version of Gear VR available for $99.99 in November last year, and now it is giving out the VR headset for free with the purchase of its new Galaxy 7 phone for a limited time period. Samsung also brought in Mark Zuckerberg for its press event to talk up Facebook’s partnership with Samsung to support 360-degree videos on Facebook and working to make the VR experience more social. Moreover, Samsung also unveiled the Gear 360 camera that is just smaller than a baseball and aims to make shooting and sharing 360-degree photos and videos easier.

What Brands Need To Do
In line with what we saw at CES earlier this year, the news from MWC shows that virtual reality is quickly gaining momentum as a nascent medium, as more and more companies start developing affordable, consumer-facing VR headsets, as well as the tools for capturing, creating, and sharing 360-degree content. While virtual reality technologies may still be a few years away from mass adoption, as we predicted in the 2020 section in our Outlook 2016, companies like Samsung and Facebook are laying the groundwork for that to happen. For brands, this means that it is time to start exploring what VR technologies have to offer and consider developing branded VR content to excite and engage consumers with immersive experiences.

 

Header image courtesy of mluxurystyle.com

FitBit Partners With HTC

Posted on by Lab Team

As health and fitness trackers become more and more of a mainstream item, smartphones and brands continue to look for new ways to bring them into their offerings. HTC’s new HTC One (M8) isn’t the first such item to do this with their phone, but it’s the first to partner with category-wide leader FitBit to bring their software onto all new HTC One devices. It means that the FitBit software will be pre-installed, so users will be much more inclined to use FitBit’s built-in software rather than heading to the Google Play store for their own. The FitBit software won’t just work with the Force or Flex; FitBit’s software will also work with any of the tracking sensors in the HTC One itself – so whether users use FitBit’s hardware or the technology built into the phone, FitBit wins. The goal, of course, is for FitBit to be to health and fitness trackers what Kleenex are to Tissues, and by integrating their software within popular smartphones at the point of purchase, they’re certainly well on their way to getting there. But whether they will be undercut by bigger companies yet to release their products – i.e. Apple – remains to be seen. Nevertheless, this is big news for both FitBit and HTC.

Google just changed the wireless game

Posted on by Lab Team

Google changes the game for mobile (Google)At the Android press event this morning, Google turned the wireless industry on its head.  On the surface, it looked like Google only introduced a new (albeit very slick) phone, the NexusOne.  But below the surface, there’s a lot more going on.

The centerpiece of the event was the Nexus One phone.  Slightly thinner and lighter than the iPhone, the Nexus One boasts a 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm (the fastest mobile phone processor on the market), a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, dual microphones for noise cancellation, and my favorite bit of all, a 3.7 inch 480×800 OLED screen.  This phone is a powerhouse, and while some in the industry are looking at the current carrier exclusivity of T-mobile (currently the 4th place carrier in the US), it makes a lot more sense when one considers that they just upgraded their network to 7.2 Mbps 3G, twice the speed of AT&T’s current network.

But this barely scratches the surface.  Continue reading “Google just changed the wireless game”