VISIONFIRST’S VIRTUAL TECH & MARKETING SERIES VOCABULARY LESSON

Well, we aren’t the Jetson’s, but we are here to help you. From HMDs to 360-degrees and CTAs to CTRs, we will help you navigate acronyms, tactics and tools of this new virtual reality (pun intended). We look forward to sharing how website enhancements, search engine marketing, virtual reality, 3D images and more can help your community standout! 

I hope you will join us in the coming weeks for The Jetson’s Have Arrived: Perfecting Virtual Marketing Tools, Technology and Messaging for Economic Development.

Before we begin the series, here’s a short vocabulary session »

View Options –

  • 2D – Standard flat video format for a computer, mobile device/tablet or television. E.g. YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, TikTok.
  • 3D – Video shot and presented using two separate views to viewer’s left and right eye which alters depth perceptions. Basically the glasses you would wear while watching 3D movie.
  • 4D – Enables the augmented reality (AR) experience, a technology that superimposes a computer generated graphic, typically through a users smartphone or tablet camera, into the user’s real world. Companies around the world are implementing AR into their selling strategies. Wayfair, a e-commerce company that sells furniture and home-goods, upgraded their mobile app in 2019 with AR features, allowing the customers to visualize how products will look and fit in their home or office space. 

Viewing Tools/Technique – 

  • Head-Mounted Display (HMD) – a general term for virtual reality machines that mount to the viewer’s head, typically in the form of goggles. VisionFirst Pro Tip  (or as we like to call it, VFPT) – skip the $500 headset and incorporate Google’s free VR app with headsets for $15.00.
  • 360-degree (one of my personal favorites)  – Videos or images that allow the viewer to control and explore using a 360 degrees perspective, via a HMD (see above), smart phone, tablet or computer. Have you ever wanted to go swimming with bears at Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia? Okay, probably not, but now you can (virtually) – just click here. « P.S. that is a CTA. P.S.S. We’ll be checking our CTR to see how many of you did this. Maybe a better example would have been how museums all over the world are offering free virtual tours. Never been to the Louvre, well now you can (virtually)!

Viewing Tools/Technique – 

  • Bounce Rate – When a user visits your website and immediately leaves/closes without clicking on additional pages or links.
  • Call to Action (CTA) – Encourages an immediate response or encourages an immediate action, usually in the form of a button, e.g. buy this, contact us, rate the app.
  • View-Through Rate (VTR) – Measures the impression of total views during an online advertising campaign. e.g. If the viewer watches the entire ad often seen at the beginning of a YouTube video or in an online news source article.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR) – A form of CTA, where the viewer has clicked on a link to view more about a subject matter. i.e. Your organization sends out a digital newsletter, blog or social media post that highlights an article or event, with links for more information. When the viewer clicks on that link, that is a CTR. This indicates the relevance of the  information distributed  to your audience

Are there more? Absolutely. However, this covers the majority of acronyms we’ll discuss in our series.

Greg Word, Senior Consultant