Branded virtual worlds
Video gaming company Roblox contains life-like virtual environments built by brands such as Van’s skatepark and a winter-themed Ralph Lauren mountain. Netflix-based games are also found on the Roblox platform. Brand ambassadors share virtual content with Roblox users. Vodka company Absolut has launched Absolut.Land, where people can use NFTs to purchase virtual fashion accessories and teleport virtually to a music festival. If someone tweets a selfie from Absolut.Land, they are airdropped a wearable.
Virtual billboards
Virtual billboards are just what they sound like—out-of-home advertising in a virtual world. They can be found on platforms such as Twitch or on video gaming platforms including Fornite. As virtual real estate grows, the space for virtual billboards increases.
Meta, Apple, Google and Microsoft are building metaverses where advertising is becoming a full-funnel experience. But don’t cash in your NFTs just yet. Most analysts predict that metaverse advertising won’t be the new channel in our digital advertising lives until 2023. With a budget or partnership in place for creative development, the future state of advertising in the metaverse can look like this for clients:
Virtual Stores
Virtual goods are sold by designers inside a social media-based virtual world and the social media company takes a percentage of those profits. Meta recently opened its beta version of Horizon Worlds. Other social media platforms are developing similar virtual store offerings.
Metaverse advertising metrics
We in digital advertising love coming up with new metrics. In metaverse advertising, we may borrow from connected TV’s concept and look at real-time buying occurring in virtual auctions in the metaverse to determine the appropriate metric. Metaverse advertising might include a cost-per-completed-view metric or a video complete rate metric. Netflix changed the Oscars; we’ll come up with something substantial to measure in the metaverse.
As the term metaverse continues to gain traction, the interest in metaverse advertising is growing exponentially. The metaverse signals a move beyond traditional advertising toward creating brand experiences that are more engaging and exciting and less invasive than what we experience with digital advertising today. And so, ad agencies must follow suit.
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