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Facebook Begins Testing of Oculus VR Advertising

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

 

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https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/16/facebook-to-begin-testing-ads-inside-oculus-virtual-reality-headsets...

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959
194 REPLIES 194


@ohgrant wrote:

Certainly no Oculus hater here. I have concerns about the logic of how it was all handled to be sure. Not sure if it was wise to make a public announcement about adds coming. Possibly to attract more developers? Trying to sell the propaganda to the public without understanding what the backlash would be seems a bit out of touch. 

 


 

Yeah, I think that your criticisms are quite fair; and stem from a good place (e.g. you certainly don't have a long standing history of hating any and all Oculus news).

 

To your point, I actually agree that it wasn't the best approach to publicize "the coming of Ads" in this particular manner. However! If I view this from the perspective of Facebook... it does feel like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" type of scenario.

 

For example, when Oculus has made updates that were not previously announced, then they are instantly accused of pulling a "bait n switch" or a "pivot." We saw this with the end-of-life announcements for GO, Rift CV1, and Rift-S. We saw this when Rift-S was outsourced to Lenovo. We saw this with the announcement of the Facebook Account Requirement.

 

Anytime the VR community doesn't get ample "pre-warning," then the proverbial witch hunt begins the moment the news breaks. Yet the moment Facebook does give ample pre-warning (as they did with the Ads in VR situation), then they end up looking clueless and daft as the preliminary backlash begins.

 

I will say though, that Facebook execs should in no way feel surprised by the backlash. The mere fact that Oculus VR has catered to gamers since the launch of the Rift CV1 was a clear indication the most vocal audience will be the overtly demanding PC Master Race! 

 

Case in point, look at the backlash Valve received when they tried to let Creators charge money for Modding Skyrim:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/valve-kills-paid-skyrim-mods-after-backlash

 

If it can happen to Valve, it can happen to anyone. Especially if your primary userbase is PC Gaming Enthusiasts.

 

If Facebook wants to recover from this first round, then they need to start introducing the first batch of "Free Games with Ads" and let people choose to add them to their Library or not.

If devs of that game had created separate "free with ads" copy (even limited time beta) in store, I think there will not be any surprise.

For device price, it could be better to have 2 different "cheap with ads" and "full price", I think.


@Nekto2 wrote:

If devs of that game had created separate "free with ads" copy (even limited time beta) in store, I think there will not be any surprise.

For device price, it could be better to have 2 different "cheap with ads" and "full price", I think.


 

Yeah they definitely should have created a new, free App instead of updating the existing paid app. This is how the Mobile App market works. Facebook and the Devs jumped the shark on this one. If you are going to mimic the multi-billion dollar Mobile App market, then mimic it to perfection; don't start trying to get creative lol

 

I had this happen on an engineering project recently. I provided a detailed document that showed, via formulaic code and plain English, how to implement a solution. The developers that tried to accomplish this ended up re-interpreting what I provided, and got it wrong. I had several conference calls to help correct their error. I could see why they thought their version was the same as mine, and I walked them through the slight differences in interpretation. The nuances are important when dealing with quantitative results; and trying to get creative with the "idea of a formula" versus "following the formula" are a great path to failure.

Yeah that would have been a better move.

I wonder if the dev discounted 2 versions of the app on the basis that people who had already bought it might want their money back in exchange for the free/cheaper version with adds.

 

Good idea for new releases though.

jab
Rising Star

I am fine with the text only ads in google products, since they are the price for a range of free products.

 

I am fine with Valve tracking which games I play and suggesting other games inside the Steam portal, since their data collection is strictly related to games and I am there to play games after all. If their tracking and suggestions started turning up outside the Steam environment or inside the actual games or if they started pushing ads other then game suggestions, then I would not be ok.

 

I am even fine with the loud and aggressive ads and stuff on Facebook, since same as with google it a free product. It's is their user tracking system spreading like locus outside the FB site I have a problem with. It is scary how often I see the Firefox container system for FB activate just surfing around.

 

But the moment I use some product that I have payed for and/or play full price games. Then I will NEVER ever be okay with forced user data collection not related to the product for monetary gains (FB account) or ads showing up there, period.