StartUp Showcase Team: AdXR to Launch Extended Reality Advertising Network

The team aims to establish the advertising platform of the future, to enable brands to safely and securely reach new audiences in the extended reality market.

With the adoption of new technologies comes opportunities for brands to reach new audiences. StartUp Showcase Team AdXR is focused on the extended reality (XR) market and will pitch its XR advertising network to a panel of investors at the Showcase on Tuesday, April 18, along with four other teams.

Extended reality (XR) is a collective term used to describe immersive technologies including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). AdXR’s mission is to help advertisers reach new audiences in AR and VR, to serve XR developers by making it easy to monetize their products, and to respect the privacy of XR users.

AdXR founder Shahnt Madalian ’23 is no newcomer to the StartUp program. Last year he joined team Quantify which took first place in the 2022 Showcase and he took first place in last year’s StartUp elevator pitch competition. A physics and economics double major, Madalian has been working on the idea for AdXR for more than two years, spending last summer focused on recruiting his team to have a solid shot at qualifying for the Showcase. He has even applied to the Rice Business Plan Competition and will find out this month if he and his team will be invited to pitch AdXR in May.

“The StartUp experience is mindblowing,” said Madalian. “Dr. Huntley has created a program that will go down in history. The Showcase for me is an opportunity to refine our communication skills and to clearly articulate what we are trying to do. We see one of our main jobs as keeping people safe in the XR space. We must be held accountable by the user, whom we have a duty to protect when it comes to their privacy.”

Madalian has built AdXR’s algorithm and he and his team are currently working with StartUp program mentors Marty Donner and Associate Professor of Marketing Nazuk Sharma, PhD, to refine their pitch. The platform will allow customers to choose the XR ads they want to run, deploy multiple versions of the ads, and receive groundbreaking metrics to gain customer insights.

Team members Caroline Morrisey MSBA’23, Méabh Hartney MSBA’24, and John Addeo MSBA’23 will join Madalian at the April 18 Showcase at the Quick Center.

To learn more about the Fairfield StartUp Showcase and to register, visit fairfield.edu/startup.

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