The Blair Witch Project revolutionized the movie marketing by turning an indie horror film into a major blockbuster and that too with a low-budget viral campaign. Well, just ahead of the third installment of this franchise on Sept 16, Lionsgate wants to juggle some of the same promotional magic with a Virtual Reality trailer that will give an immersive experience of terror to their fans for 90 seconds.

The campaign started with a $10 million in backing and the Los Angeles-based shop is one such example of a growing number of startups that are experimenting with the new ad platform. Some brands and their agencies are increasingly testing the limits of Virtual Reality and 360 degree mobile video ad formats on the publishers’ sites as the audiences are growing with weary of banners and preroll.  Many ad-tech companies are busy developing new formats these day so to support the Virtual Reality push. In July, the native video ad platform Teads and Digital ad company Undertone just unveiled its first 360 video ad format.

With increasing number of mobile in a world, 360 is a great step being taken into the really immersive and interesting ad experiences. Major Brands are already using 360 ads and they are very satisfied with the results.

Well, in the same context, a Finnish ad-tech company Kiosked and Hong Kong Airlines created a 360-degree video view of the airline’s business class cabin as what Etihad did with Nicole Kidman and over a period of a few weeks it got 500,000 views. This campaign aimed to deliver results which are 35 times more effective than traditional display ads.