Maximizing (5x) Brand Attention with Immersive Experiences

The biggest challenge for brands these days is how to stand out in the crowded media landscape. How do you ensure that you get attention for your brand story amid the noise? More and more brands are using the power of immersive experiences to get the right attention.

Physical immersive experiences such as Netflix opening theme parks, Airbnb together with brands renting out iconic houses or House of the Dragon that places large banners and dragons all over NY. But in addition to experiential marketing, we see that advertisers shifting to digital media with new forms of interaction and longer engagement times. From worlds in Roblox and Fortnite, immersive storytelling from Marvel on the Apple Vision Pro, AR mirrors to XR experiences on social media and the web.

Leveraging XR for Enhanced Brand Engagement

And those longer play/dwell times of immersive brand experiences are extremely important. Because it is precisely this active attention that makes the difference in times when attention is scarce. A lot of digital ads/content often hold attention for less than 2.5 seconds. And this is really too short because various studies show that with 1-2 or even 4.5 seconds of attentive viewing, it is physically impossible to cause the kinds of brain reactions known to be very highly predictive of brand growth and sales effects.

With our experience from the many XR experiences we have developed, we know that the level of engagement with XR experiences is much higher than with more traditional ads. And now there is also new research that supports that AR significantly boosts sustained attention. The research was done by OMD , Snap Inc. and Amplified Intelligence (consulting research company with a focus on attention as metric). They used the Snapchat Camera SDK to gather biometric attention data from 2121 users in six countries. In which they compared AR Lenses with more traditional ads. The following results emerged from this research:

• AR Lenses encourage 5x higher active attention than competing social media platforms, with ads being actively watched 81% of the time they are in view.
• With an average active attention of 12.6 seconds, Snapchat AR Lenses deliver the highest level of engagement and attention in the digital space, when compared to similar digital platforms.
• The research shows that it not just drives improved levels of attention but also brand effects. AR lenses increased short-term likelihood to buy by +53% (brand choice lift) and long-term likelihood by +31% (brand loyalty lift)

This research was done within the Snapchat platform, but based on our experience we believe that immersive XR experiences show such numbers across the board (hopefully soon substantiated by comparable research). And with more than 100 million XR users worldwide, now is the time for brands to increase the use of immersive experiences. To engage with their audiences in an interactive and immersive way and maximize the attention their brand message gets.

Let's go! ??