Adam Simon on the immersion economy: AI-personalized physical experiences are the next frontier after screens

Summary

Adam Simon, a former innovation executive at IPG Media who spent a decade forecasting media trends, is writing a book called The Immersion Economy. His argument is that AI's most underappreciated application isn't software or robotics, but making the physical world more responsive to individuals.

Before robots are everywhere, there's an interim step: AI-personalized physical experiences. The physical world could adapt to you the way a social media feed already does, but in venues, events, and public spaces. The technology exists now. Customized audio feeds delivered through AirPods at live events require no new hardware on the consumer side. The Sphere in Las Vegas has beamforming speakers that can direct different audio to different sections of the venue, a capability Simon says hasn't been fully exploited yet.

Cosm appears most often in Simon's analysis. Its courtside camera rigs for NBA games already generate immersive capture that could port directly to a Vision Pro or Meta Quest without additional production work. Simon sees Cosm venues as a middle tier in a three-layer stack. Attend in person for the biggest events, visit a Cosm location for a near-courtside experience at a fraction of the cost and travel, or watch at home in an immersive headset. The flywheel runs from venue capture through headset distribution, with venues like Sphere and Cosm doing the infrastructure work that makes headset-based consumption viable at scale.

Sphere surprised the market. Early coverage focused on losses and operating costs, but the Wizard of Oz residency, a fan experience built around a film that has aired on television for free for decades, has sold over 2 million tickets at more than $100 each. That is not the model Sphere originally pitched, but it demonstrates that immersive presentation can unlock pricing power that flat-screen viewing cannot.

Simon is skeptical that AI-powered digital entertainment will cannibalize in-person attendance. Live event ticket sales have not declined despite pandemic recovery tailwinds fading. Neurological research suggests people form stronger memories and social bonds in person, not just emotionally but biologically, which Simon treats as a durable structural advantage for physical experiences over screen-based ones.

The most practical near-term product case Simon makes is for smart glasses. Capturing a live experience through Ray-Bans or Apple's expected glasses release keeps people present while still letting them share content. This solves what he calls a genuine behavioral tension: people increasingly attend experiences primarily to document them rather than live them.