In a world plagued by the cat-and-mouse game of advertisers and ad blockers, the only scalable way to break through the noise is to create advertising that engages your audience. Gone are the days of effective traditional banner ads. Even with the advent of programmatic technologies that leverage artificial intelligence to improve your creative/audience fit, most of your target audience is either using an ad blocker or has developed something that the advertising industry refers to as “banner blindness.” Unless your advertising creative is designed to entertain, provide value or engage your audience, your online campaigns are almost guaranteed to fall short of your expectations.
One of the newest and most disruptive ad formats floating around the internet today is 3D advertising. Simply put, this type of advertising embeds an interactive 3D model within a banner ad, allowing users to preview the product being advertised and prospect themselves prior to clicking the call to action and being taken to the advertiser’s landing page. This type of advertising has proven to improve quality of traffic, reduce bounce rate and increase return on ad spend (ROAS). Most importantly, this type of advertising is engaging, interesting and innovative, allowing it to cut through the noise and circumvent banner blindness.
One of the prerequisites to getting started with 3D advertising is having a 3D model of a product. Most companies selling physical products will already have some sort of foundational 3D model, most likely from the design iteration process. If there is no existing 3D model, one can easily be created using photogrammetry, a form of 3D scanning that composites several pictures into a 3D model using special software. Another method to create a 3D model is to simply commission one from a 3D artist. Depending on the complexity of the project, this can cost anywhere between $100 and $10,000. Most consumer product models will fall into the lower end of that range.
Once the 3D model of the product in question is created, the next step is to upload it to a web-based 3D hosting service. This is required in order to embed the 3D model within the banner ad. Once the model is uploaded to a hosting service, the process of creating the ad is quite simple. Creating a 3D ad is very similar to creating a rich-media ad, but rather than coding the entire experience in HTML5 and CSS, the embedded model is used as the foundation, and the additional copy, imagery and calls to action are coded around it.
There are several other factors to keep in mind when creating 3D advertising experiences. One of the most important things to consider when selecting a 3D model is the file size and topology. In order to optimize the end-user experience and load times, the 3D model being used should ideally be under 150K vertices and use fewer than five materials. Extremely detailed models can also undergo a decimation process, as well as other optimizations such as scene graph simplification and reduction of the texture resolution to reduce file size. Also, adding limitations such as disabling zoom and camera constraints will allow for greater control of the interactivity, and will lead to a better overall user experience. For example, if the product being advertised is a car, it is important to add zoom and camera constraints in order to prevent the users from being able to view the underside of the vehicle or zoom too far in on the model.
Once the ad is created, getting it live is as simple as generating javascript tags (a process usually handled on the ad server side) and submitting them through an ad server to begin trafficking them through ad networks. Keep in mind that not all web-based 3D hosting services are compatible with popular ad networks, so it is important to ensure compatibility before building your ad creative around a specific 3D platform.
Based on the early results and the feedback from several large and notable brands including Nike, Adidas, Peugeot, LG and many others, 3D advertising is not only here to stay, but will revolutionize the way brands and advertisers think about ad creatives and campaigns. It is imperative that anyone running online ad campaigns continues to innovate and leverage disruptive, attention-grabbing ad formats that will improve marketing ROI and, most importantly, captivate an audience to reverse the stigma around online advertising.
