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Monetising 360 video

Educating students to the possibilities of 360degree video and virtual reality

Recently 360Dgrees’ Ivan Ghirlanda took a trip to Academy Xi, an educational institution based in Sydney that focuses on the skills of user experience, service design and virtual reality. As part of his visit, Ivan addressed students who are currently studying virtual reality design.

Ivan was invited as an expert in the field, to share his knowledge of 360 degree video with the students, who ranged from entrepreneurs to corporate marketing experts and small business owners. As well as sharing the steps to effectively produce a 360 degree video using the latest available equipment, Ivan reminded the students taking the course that they also have to focus on distribution and commercialisation in order to make their efforts sustainable and valuable for return on investment.

To demonstrate 360 degree video to the students, Ivan shared three case studies, including the incredible KitKat ‘Take a Virtual Break’ campaign, that allowed users to literally fly away into space, or to take a leap off a cliff and parachute through a canyon.

Also detailed were 360Dgrees’ experience of filming a training session with 2016 ARL Premiers the Cronulla Sharks and an interactive experience that was produced in collaboration with real estate website www.domain.com.au.

As Ivan and Jeremy Brown, who developed the 360 degree video platform for the Rio Olympic Games, presented to the class, one of the most common questions amongst students was “How can I make money with 360 degree video?”

It’s a great question, because unless you are creating art for art’s sake, you do need to have a goal with using virtual technologies to be able to leverage it to improve the success of your business.

“How can I make money with 360 degree video?”

The answer to the question of monetising VR and 360 video does depend on your business and your goals. However if you are able to set goals and to align a 360 degree strategy with those goals, then you should be able to effectively draw return on investment from your video creations.

For example: The KitKat virtual break campaign was designed to encourage people to sit back with a KitKat in one hand and their Google Cardboard in the other.

  • At Domain, encouraging users to ‘step inside’ a house from anywhere in the world and take a tour creates competition between buyers, boosting agent results and improving their satisfaction with the Domain brand.
  • The owners of a retail store may invite shoppers to come in and browse, helping to enhance the online shopping experience and encouraging them to ‘order now’.
  • A museum could charge entry fees to people all over the world instead of those who physically walk through the doors.

As the students learned, the possibilities for monetising 360 degree video are widespread – and only limited to your imagination and creativity.

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The humane side of virtual reality

Virtual reality is the ‘next big thing’, an industry on the precipice of being worth billions that will transform industries including entertainment, engineering and education.

What many people who are resistant to this fancy new technology don’t realise is that it also has the power to help those in need.

Virtual reality and 360degree video can help people to understand what’s beyond their own world. By giving people an understanding of a completely different reality you can prompt them to take actions.

One such example is The Guardian’s recent immersive content 6×9, which allowed users to virtually experience what it is like to be placed in solitary confinement in prison. The purpose of this interactive video was to create a dialogue around the psychological impact of prisoner isolation.

Elsewhere, one agency is using the power of 360degree video to connect WWII veterans with tours of war memorials around the world. This venture was produced to essentially provide a free travel experience to those too old to journey to the destinations that had been so impactful on their lives.

The same agency has worked on a project based in Zambia, which highlighted the plight of the disabled in developing nations. By demonstrating the struggles of someone with limited mobility, 360 video was able to play a part in raising awareness about specialty wheelchairs for people who live on rough and difficult to access terrain.

In Japan, Virtual Reality has been used to treat phantom limb pain, which affects amputees who are plagued by discomfort from body parts that no longer exist. Researchers have discovered it is possible to reduce the pain caused by this affliction by creating replica visuals of the amputated limbs.

Meanwhile, at charity galas in fancy hotels, guests of honour are able to put on a pair of virtual reality goggles to view first hand the work that the charity is doing on the other side of the world. Providing this up-close-and-personal experience can really bring home the charity’s message and help to increase donations.

And in the UK, Microsoft has worked with partners to help young people with autism by introducing them to coding as well as virtual reality. By introducing them to the idea of building something and then seeing it work, the goal was to show participants how they can transfer an interest in IT to a career in the industry.

Virtual reality isn’t just something you watch, it is something you experience. This provides the potential to open doors not just to profits, but to positive change in the world.