Collision 2016

Virtual reality was a major strand of the tech/media/marketing conference Collision this week, and one of its most breathtaking media applications came via The Guardian’s new “6X9” project. NetNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp susses out the strong signals pointing to VR’s coming mass adoption, along with the pressures of platform publishing and ad blocking that have surfaced as more immediate — and unabating — issues for publishers.

Vox’s Marty Moe and Mic’s Chris Altchek shrug off recent panic that digital media are just as vulnerable as their legacy forebears. Platform publishing is key to their audience-finding success, they say, and their nimble, iterative nature and short- and long-form video moves are positioning them to blow through any headwinds even monoliths like BuzzFeed are feeling now.

Samantha Barry, CNN’s head of social media, says the company has reframed itself as a global multiplatform network. That means moving to wherever its wide-ranging audiences are — most recently messaging apps — with habituating audiences as the ultimate success metric.

Marriott International’s Creative Director Marc Battaglia says the company has already been aggressively testing the virtual reality waters. He says that within two years, it’s going to be a “key part” of the company’s marketing strategy capable of producing an emotional connection with consumers like nothing else.

The CEOs of Taboola and Storyful, both major content discovery platforms, say that platforms like Facebook are having a massive impact on the discovery process. But while playing ball with such platforms is unavoidable, old tools like email and new ones like VR and messaging may offer powerful alternatives.