• by Bryan Yeager , March 3, 2016

What did Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise appearance at Samsung’s Mobile World Congress event say about the future of virtual reality, especially for marketers and advertisers? Is a room full of people sharing an immersive experience a harbinger of what life might be like two,  five or 10  years down the line as VR’s popularity rises?

Or is it nothing more than a trade show gimmick to wow journalists and attendees?

I’m cautiously optimistic about VR as an immersive that, among many other applications, can let brands tell stories and engage with people in new and interesting ways. There are several reasons to be bullish that this latest VR hype cycle will materialize into a sizable market instead of fizzling out yet again.

• Many of the technical limitations that have vexed past attempts at commercializing VR have been solved or will be soon. Key among them is “VR sickness,” a feeling of nausea that can occur with dissonance between what the user is viewing on a headset and the motions being made with their head or other parts of the body. As processors get faster, screen resolutions improve and optics refined, the comfort level of experiencing VR for more than a few minutes continues to increase.

• Gaming will definitely be an important on-ramp to VR adoption, but consumers are interested in using it for a wide array of applications. An October 2015 survey conducted by Ericsson ConsumerLab found that the top VR activities that interested smartphone users worldwide was seeing items in real size and form when shopping online, VR smartphone maps and moves that play all around the user.

Movies (39%) slightly topped games (38%) when it came to VR content Internet users in the U.S. and Western Europe were interested in experiencing, per October 2015 polling from Futuresource Consulting.

• Speaking of movies and video, 360-degree video--sometimes called cinematic VR--is natively supported on major video platforms like YouTube and Facebook, making the format popular for brands and media companies that are experimenting with VR. The associated technology to capture, stitch and distribute 360-video is also becoming more widely available and cost-effective.

Nikon, Samsung and others are launching small 360 cameras geared to consumers this year, lowering the barrier for experimentation and opening up opportunities for more user-generated content.

It also helps that hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into VR and AR startups by investors, according to CB Insights data. Nonetheless, there are a few cautions worth noting:

• VR technology has been around for several decades, but it’s just now starting to make its way into the hands and onto the heads of consumers. At $599 plus the necessity of having a powerful PC, Facebook’s Oculus Rift is ideal for serious gamers, but its mass appeal is questionable. Other high-end headsets slated to come out this year, like Sony’s Playstation VR and the HTC Vive, are also geared toward gamers.

Devices that leverage smartphones as the conduit for VR experiences, like Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR, are becoming more widely available, but it’s not yet clear how well-penetrated they are and how much time people will spend with them.

• Projections for the growth rate and size of the VR market are all over the map. A December 2015 estimate from investment bank UBS pegged worldwide VR hardware and software revenues at $10 billion by 2020. Venture firm Digi-Capital predicts the global VR market will hit $30B in the same timeframe.

Researcher TrendForce expects VR hardware and software to generate revenues of $70B worldwide by 2020. These are vast differences that underscore the nascent state of the space and its uncertain future.

• Augmented Reality (AR), which involves overlaying virtual objects and other types of digital information over the real world using smartphones, tablets and smart glasses, could prove more useful in the long run than the fully immersive experiences VR provides. Google’s Project Tango, with which home improvement Lowe’s is experimenting and Microsoft’s HoloLens, which has partnered up with Volvo and the NFL, a few examples of how brands are thinking about using AR tech in the not-so-distant future.

Some VR endeavors will surely falter. But the thrust behind this wave of innovation is undeniably strong. For marketers, advertisers and publishers--especially those that rely heavily on video--now is the time to start testing out and experimenting with immersive media.