The case for advertising online is already a compelling one. And an increasing number of companies don’t need convincing — The Internet ad market last year grew 26%, surpassing both radio and cable TV, to reach $21.2 billion, according to the annual online ad spending report from IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

This week MTV showed combining their television show The Hills with an online 3D virtual world and a website, meaning users were far more engaged. Not only that, but their watchers who also visited the website and the virtual world had much more positive things to say about The Hills major sponsor Pepsi, according to the report. (See Adweek article ). Until now promotion across several platforms with digital media was suspected to work, but never proved.

Because ExitReality enables instant representation of every single social network page as an inhabitable 3D environment, when it launches soon ExitReality will instantly be the world’s largest 3D virtual world with more than 300 million 3D places. For advertisers, this represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to promote their brands through the birth of a new medium.

Once launched, advertisers, publishers and users will be able to build, manage and freely participate in the growth of this medium. Pre-launch, we are offering select partners the opportunity to gain early access to our technology and the ability to deeply integrate within the platform itself.

ExitReality not only offers cross-platform promotion opportunities, but easy access to 3D advertising — Virtual goods have been built by ExitReality that support web ad feeds such as standard banner ad formats. These ad objects can be used by users to decorate their 3D page. A partner can have full control over which ads are displayed on these goods for visitors of their site’s domain. These ads are clickable just like normal web banner ads, so partners can make money through normal web advertising services.

From there the opportunities are endless: we are currently creating branded avatars, objects, decorations, buildings and places for our pre-launch partners.
With ‘giveaways’, businesses can spread their brand message. It’s all set up for viral distribution. A user takes a cool 3D object from a business space, puts it in their own 3D space then their friends and other visitors can take the object for their own page, and because ExitReality extends over all social networks, the object has the potential to appear everywhere. These objects can engage the user in many interactive ways, and can also link to a 2D webpage or 3D destination. The image right shows how giveaways work:

Examples

• A musician in MySpace Music has a live performance space to interact with fans and organize virtual concerts, show music videos on a virtual television and give away songs in a 3D widget.
• A car company on Facebook has a 3D racetrack and give away a 3D car that users can make their color of choice then drive around in 3D. The car has a link back to the company’s website.
• A fashion designer with a 3D catwalk can host their own fashion shows and give away avatars wearing virtual versions of their own designs.
• A film or TV company’s 3D space is a cinema showing short films, trailers or television shows. They give away virtual popcorn to their moviegoers or a 3D plasma flat-screen television showing their latest offerings.

Which brands, advertisers or businesses do you think will be first? Please feel free to leave a comment below.

Sign up on http://www.exitreality.com/ for the beta or feel free to contact us to talk ideas and partnership opportunities.