Have you ever felt that the infinite scroll on social networks has become… flat? And I don’t mean boring (which is also boring), but literally two-dimensional. We’ve been limiting our creativity to shiny rectangles of different inches for decades: the mobile, the tablet, the monitor. But something has changed.
The glass barrier is breaking.
We are no longer talking about distant science fiction futures. With the irruption of devices such as the Apple Vision Pro or the maturity of the Meta Quest 3, marketing is facing its biggest disruption since the advent of the smartphone: Spatial Computing.
At Inprofit we are clear: brands that continue to think in 2D will be stuck in the past. Today we will analyze how to design strategies for a world where the canvas is infinite and the user no longer “sees” the content, but lives within it.
The end of disruption: Towards “livable” marketing
Let’s face it. Traditional advertising, as we know it in the digital environment, is based on interruption. You’re reading a news story, a banner pops up. You’re watching a video, a pre-roll appears. It’s a toll that the user reluctantly pays.
Spatial Computing is a game changer because it eliminates the physical boundaries of the screen. In this new paradigm, brands have the opportunity to create digital assets that are integrated into the user’s physical environment. It’s not about covering up their reality, but enriching it.
Imagine you are a decoration brand. Instead of chasing the user with a retargeting banner, you offer him a spatial application where he can place, in real size and with photorealistic textures, that sofa in his own living room. The user walks around, sees how the light hits and how it matches his curtains.
This is not intrusive advertising; it’s a livable brand experience. The user has invited you into their personal space. The trust that is generated in that moment is infinitely superior to that of any display ad.
Note to marketing managers: The key here is utility and immersion. If your presence in the 3D space doesn’t provide value or genuine entertainment, you’ll be as irrelevant as an annoying pop-up, but much more expensive to produce.
Is Augmented Reality (AR) the same as Spatial Computing?
This is the million dollar question and where many marketers get confused. We often use the terms interchangeably, but there is a crucial technological and experiential nuance that we need to understand to get the strategy right.
The Augmented Reality we have consumed so far (think Instagram filters or Pokémon GO) is a “through a window” experience. You need to hold your phone, point the camera and look at the small screen. There is a physical disconnect; your arm gets tired, the field of view is limited.
Spatial Computing, on the other hand, is immersive and persistent. Thanks to mixed reality viewers, digital objects are anchored in physical space and “understand” the environment. If you place a virtual object on a table and go to another room, when you come back, the object is still there.
Key differences for your strategy:
- Interaction: In mobile AR you touch glass. In Spatial Computing you use your hands, your eyes and your voice to manipulate the content as if it were real matter.
- Depth: Spatial computing allows occlusion (a virtual object to hide behind a real one), which tricks the brain into accepting the illusion as reality.
- Attention: On mobile, a WhatsApp notification distracts you. In an immersive spatial environment, the brand has 100% of the user’s attention.
From Ecommerce to Immersive Commerce: 3D Interfaces that convert
E-commerce has a historical Achilles heel: uncertainty. “Will it fit?”, “Is that color really like that?”, “Will it fit in the stairwell?”. This uncertainty is the mother of returns, the great enemy of profitability in retail.
Spatial Computing is not only a branding channel, it’s a brutal conversion tool. We are moving from browsing product grids (the classic Shopify or WooCommerce grid) to interacting with digital twins of the products.
3D interfaces make it possible to dissect a product. Think of the automotive industry or B2B industrial machinery. A potential customer can “explode” a car engine in the air, see its internal components, configure the finishes and virtually sit in the driver’s seat.
This drastically reduces friction in the buying process. By eliminating abstraction (having to imagine what the product looks like), we speed up the decision.
Is your brand ready to make the leap?
If you’re wondering if this applies to your business, the short answer is yes. But implementation requires strategy. At Inprofit, we analyze your catalog and define which products benefit most from a volumetric display.
Would you like to know how to reduce your return rate by implementing 3D visualization?
Storyliving vs. Storytelling: The narrative paradigm shift
For years, marketers have repeated the mantra of“Storytelling”. Storytelling is powerful, it connects emotionally and humanizes the brand. But storytelling implies that there is a storyteller and a passive listener.
Spatial Computing pushes us towards Storyliving.
In Storyliving, the brand doesn’t tell the story; the brand creates the world where the story happens, and the user is the protagonist. We no longer say “our hotel is a paradise of relaxation”, but transport the user to the terrace of the suite at sunset, listening to the sea and feeling the atmosphere before booking.
Keys to design an immersive narrative:
- User agency: Let the user make decisions within the experience. Don’t guide them on a fixed track; let them explore.
- Sensoriality: Spatial sound is 50% of the experience. It uses 360º audio to direct the user’s attention without the need for arrows or text.
- Context: Design experiences that fit the user’s room. If we detect that it’s in a small space, the experience should be intimate; if it’s in a large space, make it grand.
The goal is to create memories. The human brain encodes high-quality mixed reality experiences in the same area as physical memories, not like memories of watching a movie. This means that the brand footprint is much deeper and longer lasting.
Challenges and opportunities for SMEs
It’s easy to think that this is the exclusive domain of Coca-Cola or Nike. Wrong. The technology is democratizing at breakneck speed. 3D authoring tools and web-based platforms (WebXR) make it possible to deploy immersive experiences without the need for the user to download a heavy 2GB app.
For an SMB, Spatial Computing is a massive differentiation opportunity. In a sea of competitors still fighting for CPC on Google Ads with flat landings, offering an immersive experience immediately positions you as an innovative leader.
SEO is also evolving towards this. Search engines and response engines such as Perplexity or ChatGPT are starting to value the richness of content and user interaction. A website that keeps the user interacting with a 3D model for 4 minutes is much more likely to rank than one with plain text that is abandoned after 30 seconds.
The future does not wait, it is built today
Spatial Computing is not going to replace mobile tomorrow morning, but the transition has begun. The brands that start experimenting today, generating their 3D asset libraries and understanding the language of immersion, will be the ones that dominate the market in the next five years.
It’s not about launching a campaign in the metaverse for the sake of it. It’s about understanding how technology can solve real problems for your customers, improve their shopping experience and create an emotional bond that a glass screen can never achieve.
At Inprofit, we don’t just follow trends; we help our clients surf them profitably. We are specialists in integrating advanced Martech solutions and disruptive creative strategies that impact the bottom line.
Do you have a product that deserves to be seen in three dimensions? Do you want your brand to stop telling stories and start making your customers live them?
Don’t let your competition occupy your space. Book a strategic consultancy today with our team of experts in new technologies. We will analyze your business and design the roadmap to take your brand to the next dimension.
