The ad promotes 'From the Edge' a documentary for the Weather Channel
The first ever 3D advert for the iPad has just launched.
Creator Cooliris hopes it will kickstart innovation in the nascent mobile ad business.
The ad promotes a new series for the US Weather Channel which
follows the award winning photographer Peter Lik as he travels across
the US to take the perfect photo.
Experts say such ads will take a while to catch on.
A lot of advertising in the mobile space is done using banner
ads which include basic static display images at the top or bottom of a
phone screen.
They are a low cost way to advertise but not very effective because users find them annoying and rarely click on them.
"Rather than being inspired by the bad advertising we have
seen on the desktop and that has migrated to mobile devices, we went
back to the drawing board to create a new advertising platform," said
Soujanya Bhumkar, chief executive officer of Cooliris
The Interactive Advertising Bureau reported in April that
banner ads accounted for nearly 24% of a record $26 bn spent on online
advertising.
There was no breakdown for mobile but the IAB estimated that total revenue for the year was between $550m and $650m in the US.
Technology
Cooliris said it has developed two technologies that enable ad creators to transform 2D images into 3D.
One is called PageKit which is a digital publishing
technology that makes it possible to quickly create dynamic, animated
layouts of text, image and video.
RenderKit is a platform for producing immersive mobile ads, and adds 3D to PageKit.
"When you look at a photo of the Grand Canyon on a screen,
you can't peek around it and see what it's like on the other side -
simply put, photos have a fixed perspective," explained Mayank Mehta,
head of products at Cooliris.
"We are able to represent 3D objects on a 2D device by
drawing out all the different angles from the scene. As viewers change
perspectives using gestures on their mobile device, we show them the
corresponding image. This makes it feel like they are at the Grand
Canyon," he added.
He said that the iPad lends itself easily to 3D because of a users ability to interact using the touchscreen and tilt functions.
"Until recently the big stumbling block has been the graphics
processor that gives you the ability to display these 3D models in a
way that is effective, fast and efficient. And that has changed with
these next generation devices like the iPad, iPhone and Android devices
where we have been able to take advantage of the native processing power
they have," he said.
Too expensive
But industry watchers see a major hurdle to 3D adverts becoming ubiquitous.
"The limitations for 3D ad campaigns catching on comes down
to the devices themselves, their processing power and the fact that the
majority of users still have feature phones rather than smart phones,"
said Justin Montgomery, editor in chief of Mobile Marketing Watch.
"3D will change things greatly but it will be several years
down the line until enough people have the ability to even view those
ads," he added.
Meanwhile Colin Gibbs, a mobile consultant who writes for the technology site GigaOm, said that it may prove too expensive.
"3D is a great vehicle for certain types of products like
cars and technology but I think it will cost an advertiser more to build
campaigns around these rich immersive features than just placing a link
on a page."
Research by eMarketer has estimated that US mobile ad
spending will break the $1bn mark this year and rise to over $2.5bn by
2014.
0 comments:
Post a Comment