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Media publication Shoot has released its mid-year survey on the state of the advertising, as seen from the perspectives of luminaries at numerous ad agencies.

Some of the notable threads in survey responses were excitement about virtual reality (VR), the opportunities created by live video, and the advertising potential in voice services. Altogether, Shoot surveyed 15 people from the top creative, production, and executive ranks of 15 different agencies.

Here is more detail on some of the noteworthy, forward-looking insights from Shoot’s agency survey:

• VR will unlock a new paradigm in storytelling. Excitement about VR (as well as augmented reality and Pokemon Go) was rampant throughout the survey, because it will unlock the ability to create immersive experiences like never before. One respondent compared VR to a breakthrough medium analogous to radio in the early 20th century, TV a little later on, and the internet in the 1980s, echoing sentiments by Chris Milk, the CEO of VR company Within, in a recent TedTalk. However, respondents were also realistic that VR is at an early stage, and that there is still a significant gap between producing VR content and bringing it to the masses.

• New platforms lead to a new breed of creators. In broad industry terms, the ability to create stories for a (vertical) mobile format is now an imperative for agencies and other producers. Some respondents expressed admiration for work iPhone image- and filmmaking, including Apple’s own “Shot on iPhone” campaign. Meanwhile, emerging live media formats on Facebook, Twitter (Periscope) and Snapchat are engendering a new generation of content creators and brand influencers, much like Instagram created new breed of photographers.

• Voice-activated technologies are a budding space. One respondent noted the huge opportunities presented by voice-activated services, like Amazon Echo and Siri. Indeed, in the one year since launching in June 2015, the voice-controlled Echo has charted a similar sales curve as early iPhone shipments. The growing importance of voice in search is evident: Siri received over a billion speech requests by June 2015, and 20% of searches an Android are voice-based, according to venture capitalist Mary Meeker’s Internet Trendsreport. Furthermore, at least 50% of searches will make use of speech or images in 2020, according to Andrew Ng – chief scientist at Baidu – cited by Meeker.

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