The research explores the evolving role of virtual reality (VR) as an immersive and interactive medium for marketing communications. It examines VR’s potential to engage consumers through marketing communications embedded in VR applications. The authors aim to contribute to filling the gap in empirical studies on the types, formats, prevalence, opportunities, and barriers of marketing communications in VR applications. Through a consecutive approach, they first conducted a content analysis of VR games in the German Meta Quest App Store to identify and categorize third-party VR marketing communications. This was followed by two series of semi-structured interviews with VR users unveiling the patterns of user perception of different types of VR marketing communications. Moreover, an analysis of semi-structured expert interviews to understand VR’s effectiveness as a marketing tool was conducted. The findings yield preliminary insights into the advent of VR marketing communications. The authors demonstrate a limited prevalence and variety of VR marketing communications within their sample. Moreover, the authors explore the dual nature of the effectiveness of VR marketing communications.