The study was carried out by online video advertising technology firm YuMe with key partners global digital agency Isobar, immersive entertainment studio RLTY CHK and immersive media analytics platform provider RetinadVR. It compared consumer responses to three forms of VR advertising — a pre-roll video ad, brand logos present in-game and 3D branded objects inserted into interactive game play.

Overall the findings revealed that as brands continue to identify the most impactful video advertising formats, there was clear evidence about which ad format elicits the strongest emotional response, identified through Isobar's proprietary VR analytics and measurement platform. Isobar found that pre-roll video within a VR experience is associated with a stronger emotional response, both higher emotional arousal and more positive emotional valence. Generally, stronger emotional response levels make advertising more memorable, as is often evidenced by correlating with higher recall.

“We believe our study indicates that VR advertising  is highly memorable in any format. It’s encouraging to see that a video ad, the most familiar and high-performing digital format, also delivers the highest rate of ad recall in the VR world,” said Mireya Arteaga, research lead at YuMe. “We believe immersive advertising is on the rise. Its ability to deliver a compelling branded-content message that is interactive, engaging and offers consumers the ability to own their ad experience is very attractive to today’s advertisers.”