What is this new term Immersive Technology?

 Immersive Technology extends reality by overlaying digital images on a user’s environment like 360 space/sphere, users can then look in any direction and see content. 

Immersive technologies include 

• Virtual reality (VR), which replaces the user’s physical environment with digital content;

•  Augmented reality (AR), which overlays digital content over the user environment; and

•  Mixed reality (MR) which combines digital content with the physical environment in a way that enables interaction among and with both types of elements.

• OR called XR which is the term used to describe the full spectrum of Immersive Technology (VR, AR, MR).

Ways to Use Immersive Technology

1. Marketing & Advertising

Immersive Advertising technology takes advantage of a mobile phone’s sensory inputs (like its gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer). These sensory inputs allow the immersive ad to respond to device motion, which makes it very effective for mobile advertising. Because Immersive Ads are very interactive, they are able to initiate and sustain ad engagement. They also elevate the ad experience for the consumer – a very important factor considering the ad industry has been getting a bad rep for intrusive and irrelevant experiences.

Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing can be found in travel trade shows. During events, travel brands & tourism boards would hand out cardboard headsets and encourage people to try them out with a 360 video of the tourist spot they’re promoting. Some of these Experiential Marketing installations are so incredibly detailed that brands have even created sets and included props that would help elevate the immersive experience.

Immersive Web Apps

 When a consumer is exploring an Immersive Ad and is interested to learn more, the consumer can click on a CTA inside the Immersive Ad that will redirect them to an Immersive Web App (IWA). An IWA is a bigger and deeper implementation of an Immersive Ad. Because it works as some sort of landing page, it gives brands an opportunity to further expose consumers to their messaging and target those who are deeper in the sales cycle.

2. Ecommerce & Shopping Tools

The experience is made even more immersive by letting users sit in actual car seats to make them feel like they’re actually inside a car. Other examples of Immersive Ecommerce & Shopping Tools are the Target and Ikea AR apps mentioned before where users can try and see how a product would look like in their homes. 

This also works for real estate where people looking for homes can decide which homes are worth visiting in person and which homes are not, by taking a virtual tour of the home first. By allowing consumers to “try before they buy”, immersive technology makes the online shopping experience much more seamless and interactive.

3. Healthcare

Doctors and healthcare providers have discovered that Immersive Technology helps with relieving a patient’s pain as immersing them in an experience distracts them from what’s going on. For example, in a university in Canada, students developed a VR game that would immerse cancer patients during chemotherapy and thus, distract them from their pain. . Immersive Technology can help doctors watch other surgeons perform operations remotely – maybe even from a first person perspective.

4. Education

Classic painters studio or find themselves placed in the landscape of the painting. And with the ability to download immersive technology apps, those who are unable to travel to popular museums are now given an opportunity to view rare works of art and limited-run collections.

 Another benefit is that Immersive Technology allows medical students and doctors to do surgery simulations. This allows the feel a deeper emotional connection to the brand and artworks.

5. Gaming

Gaming and Immersive Technology have become almost synonymous to each other  causing a barrier for brands to leverage this technology. Thankfully, this misconception has slowly been debunked as people are beginning to realize the many different benefits of Immersive Technology. Even so, the Gaming Industry has been going strong with Immersive Technology.

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