Facebook is adding VR ads to Oculus Quest apps, podcasts on its main hub

In completely unsurprising news, Facebook has announced that it will start putting ads into its Oculus Quest apps. The world’s biggest social media site uses advertising to generate the majority of its revenue, and it is now bringing that expertise to its virtual reality space.

While this doesn’t mean that you will all of a sudden be seeing Takealot ads in the middle of your VR gaming experience, it does mean that you will be encountering ads in the menu and selected apps. Tying into the previous announcement that people will need a Facebook account to use the Oculus, the site’s accumulation of a ton of personal data means that a catered advertising experience in the VR space will make it even more valuable to marketers. And annoying to users who realise just how creepy it is that Facebook knows everything about them.

We’ve known that this was Facebook’s intention for a while now and it will be interesting to see how users respond to their VR space being interrupted by ads. On the one side, it does feel invasive, but on the other, it could give Facebook more money to improve the VR experience and keep costs down. There is unfortunately always a trade-off we need to be prepared for when it comes to handing companies our precious data.

This news coincides with Facebook also announcing that its bringing podcasts to Facebook profiles as well, in a move that will see it stepping more into the spaces occupied by Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music, and will only continue the big tech fight we continue to see from these big companies. As for how these podcasts will work, other than that a tab will appear where users can upload them to their respective pages. Facebook has not revealed any information around the copyright of these podcasts and how it will work if people have the same podcast uploaded on different platforms. Those are things that the big suits will probably need to iron out before this feature is released globally.

Facebook is certainly stepping up its effort to attract both users and money. And while adding podcasts to its already wide service offering might garner a few more users, it might lose a few more with an increase in advertising on the VR front.  

Last Updated: June 18, 2021