Facebook has announced that it will start showing ads within the applications of its Oculus virtual reality glasses, something that had not happened to date but which means aligning this business segment with the company’s main source of income: advertising.
In an entry on the corporate blog, the social network called the initiative an “experiment” and detailed that one of the first applications to receive publicity will be the popular Blaston video game developed by Resolution Games.
From Facebook they were convinced that by opening a new source of income to developers of virtual reality applications “the types of content will be expanded” on that platform and, consequently, progress will be made towards greater adoption of this technology by the public. .
In search of massiveness
Virtual reality, which for years was called to be the standard of the future in industries such as video games, has never fully taken off, and its penetration in the market continues to be testimonial.
Facebook, which in addition to Oculus and the social network that bears its name, also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, receives the vast majority of its income from advertising, so it has a great and detailed knowledge of the sector that you can now use on Oculus.
However, further expanding its dominance in the digital advertising market (Google’s parent company Alphabet and Facebook account for more than half of all internet ad spend in the United States) could make open antitrust disputes against the company more difficult. social network.
The company that Mark Zuckerberg runs faces two lawsuits filed against it late last year by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and attorneys general from 46 states and two US territories. for alleged practices contrary to free competition.
Both lawsuits focus on acquisitions by the social network of competitors Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, operations that, paradoxically, were approved at the time by the FTC itself, the same entity that is now complaining against Facebook.
