This startup makes real-life ads on Google Street View clickable in VR

It may be a self-fulfilling prophecy that Mark Zuckerberg predicts virtual reality will be “the next major computing and communication platform” after phones.

From games and movies to education, medical treatments, and household use, the applications of VR are limitless. Startups along with tech giants like Google, Facebook, Samsung, and Sony are placing big bets on it, and with the Oculus Rift’s anticipated rollout this quarter, the hype has just begun for the nascent technology.

But the debate is still swirling over how to make it all sustainable: outside of hardware sales, how can it be monetized?

VR content needs more functionality if it is to break out of the entertainment bubble. VisualCamp, an early-stage startup in South Korea, may have a solution. It has developed technology to make real-life ads clickable in virtual reality on Google Street View.

The VisualCamp team, including co-founders Jason Park (left) and Charles Seok (second from left).

“We think the missing point is advertisement. So we can be the piece of the puzzle to link the VR ecosystem,” Charles Seok, co-founder and CEO, tells Tech in Asia.

Eye reading

Charles and his co-founder Jason Park started out in late 2014 by tackling a different problem – the lack of input methods for hands-free VR. Using a sensor made by Tobii, the startup has been developing an eye-tracking keyboard that allows users to select letters (or the space bar) by staring at them.

A group of users who tried it out for one or two hours was able to type up to 110 characters per minute – compared to a person’s average typing speed of 190-200 characters per minute. Since then, the technology has expanded to copying and pasting text into Microsoft Word, browsing the internet, and will soon be able to command printing.

But the startup determined that the market for such technology was much too narrow, limited to impaired people. To reach the mass consumer market, it widened its scope.

VisualCamp, a resident of Google’s Campus Seoul startup hub, worked on identifying billboards on Google Street View and creating analytics software to detect when and for how long headset wearers look at ads.

Mobile first

I tried to try it out