What is virtual reality in advertising?

The scale problem

VR advertising has been described as imminent for over a decade. The obstacle has never been the format; it is the installed base.

Headsets remain expensive, sessions are short, and usage is concentrated in gaming and a narrow set of professional applications. A medium reaching a small, specific audience for limited periods is not one media budgets move into, however impressive the experience is.

This is worth saying plainly because the category attracts more strategy documents than spending, and has for years.

What works within it

• In-experience placement, where a brand appears naturally within a virtual environment — the equivalent of product placement.
• Branded environments for high-consideration purchases where exploration genuinely helps.
• Training and demonstration, which is closer to marketing utility than to advertising.
• Not interruptive formats. An advertisement that interrupts an immersive experience is experienced far more negatively than the same interruption on a screen.

The lesson that generalises

VR is a useful counter-example to the assumption that a more immersive medium is a more valuable advertising medium.

Immersion raises the cost of interruption. The more completely a medium holds someone's attention, the more damaging it is to break it — which is why the formats that work in VR are ambient rather than interruptive.

The same principle governs conversational ads. An AI assistant holds attention completely during a response, and formats that interrupt it perform far worse than formats that attach to it. Both media reward advertising that fits the experience rather than pausing it.