Nielsen did an interesting study of the effectiveness of VR for nonprofits and the results are very exciting! Among the highlights:
Potential VR users (those who said they would likely use VR devices within the next year) were more likely to give to charity or volunteer than the average population.
They demoed 14 nonprofit VR experiences for consumers and found that 84% of the people who tried VR were able to recall the featured charity across the content tested (vs. only 54% for traditional video mid-roll ads).
Across brand impact measures, the VR content influenced a broader set of the exposed population—from familiarity (45% vs 34%) to affinity (36% vs 25%) to info seeking (48% vs 37%).
VR users in the study were also motivated to make larger donations than traditional advertising for 10 of the 12 experiences where this exercise was included in the study, with VR driving as much as three times the dollar value driven by traditional advertising.
Charity-centered VR content was also more effective at driving attitudinal impact than advertiser-centered VR content. For example, charity VR content drove a 30% greater information-seeking intent increase, nearly three times the ROI seen by traditional advertisers.