Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is arguably one of the most trending topics in the digital world right now. The concept of metaverse aims to connect people through digital spaces which have been a staple for the past couple of years. Ironically, what was once regarded as a negative influence, isolationist, or a poor substitute for “real life” experiences, has become the new innovation that people are looking forward to. Amongst the transformations that “lockdowns” and “new norm” have brought, there is a revalorization of digital alternatives that are considered as practical and significant. From work from home or online education to shopping and interacting, these virtual spaces have found new testing grounds to deal with the challenges presented by the pandemic. 

How Does the Metaverse Influence Businesses?

With the renaming of Facebook to Meta and the billion-dollar investments to focus on developing products and applications in the virtual space, there is no doubt that metaverse has many possible futures ahead. Therefore, as with any major transformation that occurred during the pandemic, it is imperative that business leaders start thinking about opportunities to enhance their customer and employee digital experience for the metaverse. To overcome the extreme digital competition, businesses must prepare their companies for the pivot to new interaction models.

Despite the ambiguity of the metaverse, several businesses have already begun to capitalize on the intersection of where people connect and buy not only in a traditional internet context (the usual online shopping) but also in a 3D, immersive metaverse. Virtual showrooms, non-fungible tokens (NFT), curated virtual art, fashion shows, and much more have suddenly shifted from fringe experimentation to mass adoption. In fact, several digital marketing agencies have begun optimizing websites and virtual goods to make them a part of the meta world where brands will emerge in importance as capabilities scale.

Advertising on the Metaverse

Since the concept is comparatively new, advertising for businesses should always be in a test-and-learn mode, especially because the digital landscape, in particular, requires intellectual curiosity. The metaverse could be potentially the next iteration of how customers use the internet to connect and communicate with a business. Therefore, most businesses and digital marketers will be quite curious to understand the implications of advertising and digital media in the metaverse. 

What the meta advertising executives plan for the future Social Network Trends for Companies and Business .

The New Billboard Ad

It almost sounds like going back to traditional advertising but this is in the virtual world. Metaverse will take inspiration from the root of advertising with their virtual billboard advertisements. Similar to the real world, brands would merely erect digital billboards in the metaverse. Businesses will have to buy these types of placements within a Metaverse environment or a 3D environment. Currently, such billboards are mostly implemented in games such as Soccer and FIFA, in which boards for businesses both increase awareness and, if the visitor is interested, lead to more information about the product.

Product Placement

The restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic compelled more retail and textile brands to experiment with the latest in camera technology and virtual fitting apps. These apps were predominantly used for clothing and cosmetics, that people could try in the virtual world and buy in the real world. With metaverse, people can actually leverage “virtual fashion”, where their avatars can walk around wearing brands like Nike, Adidas, Gucci, and much more. 

For example, a couple of months back Gucci introduced a purse in Roblox that was more expensive than the item in real life. These brands can have platforms or digital showrooms in the metaverse where users can interact and play games.

The metaverse product placement works a bit differently from the usual ones that we see around us. Generally, in metaverse gaming, you can play and win prizes or buy something with coupons or vouchers that are awarded to you. For instance, in the game World of Warcraft, you are capable of mining gold and when you get enough gold you can purchase items from the game sponsors.

Digital Business Executives

Most business owners will agree that marketing gets 10 times better when customers can interact with a human rather than fill up forms, or browse the website for answers. Though a digital human may not be an actual human being, they will be just like every other avatar in the metaverse and can be significantly capable of interacting with customers entering your digital store.

Digital human technology in the metaverse is mainly based on artificial intelligence (AI) and it purports that you can have 3D, almost photo-realistic renditions of human beings in the virtual world. These could even be celebrities, athletes, social media influencers, or anyone for that matter. As the potential of AI continues to grow, business leaders and users must become more comfortable with the widespread application of artificial intelligence in advertising. 

In fact, there were already numerous companies that made impressive progress with chatbot development by eliminating the usual chat-interactive interface and giving it a human touch in both looks and feel. The growth of metaverse will only make more improvements in chatbot technology and digital humans will be more pertinent than ever before. These 3D versions of chatbots would be capable of answering questions just like a human employee and can also be AI-enabled non-playing characters (NPCs) in a video game that can react to human interactions in a VR world.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that generally, most people are opposed to advertising and it could be really annoying if they are bombarded with ads on a new platform they want to check out. So as businesses try to penetrate the metaverse environment, it’s imperative that digital marketers take a creative approach to advertising and not follow the usual ad strategies that could lead to negative reception.

Remember that you are entering a new platform, therefore taking a new advertising format into account will be the right approach. Hence, people in brand marketing or leadership roles should begin now and start thinking about how to express their creativity and their storytelling in virtual reality. If the creative palette expands to different dimensions in the metaverse, brands should see the potential and create experiences at any point in the customer journey, from engagement to lead generation and transaction to customer support. And, someday, in the future, digital marketers and experts doing affordable web design in Toronto would be able to run ad campaigns, paid promotions, and much more in the virtual world just like on social media platforms nowadays.

Author Bio:

Cindy Williams is a blogger in Canada. She is working as an outreach coordinator for Web Sharx, a company offering website design services in Toronto. She graduated with honors from the University of British Columbia with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing.