Over the course of the year to date we’ve reported on a number of different financial deals involving both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) studios. In the majority of cases these acquisitions have been made by some pretty big players in the ‘traditional media’ arena, companies such as Apple purchased Metaio, News Corp invested in Plattar for the future, The Huffington Post took control of VR content studio RYOT (thanks to parent company AOL) and elsewhere Starbreeze acquired ePawn to amalgamate their technology into both Starbreeze’s current and future projects.
Speaking of RYOT, they are a previous partner of the New York Times which is the latest outlet to think ahead in terms of the new technology and have acquired Fake Love an outside the box thinking advertising agency which has both AR and VR credentials. Based in both New York and Dubai previously clients include internationally recognised brands like Star Wars, Coca-Cola and Nike. Fake Love even has some previous history with Google and their Google Play Music brand.
The move has been made in order to expand the services offered by it’s advertising arm T Brand Studio. A similarly purposed acquisition was made earlier this year for social media marketing advertiser HelloSociety.
“In less than three years, T Brand Studio, which is the fastest growing part of our advertising business, has evolved from a content studio that made native advertising into a full-fledged marketing and creative services agency.” Explains Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer Meredith Kopit Levien in a statement. “We’ve had a thesis around being able to uniquely support marketers across the whole content marketing supply chain – strategy, creative, distribution and measurement – and this acquisition adds to our ability to deliver extremely complex creative productions.”
VRFocus will bring you more news on the ever changing increasing demand for VR and AR skills as we get it.
