Advertising in the Metaverse

Advertising in the Metaverse

by Max Petrungaro metaverse

What will advertising in the metaverse look like? Gaming platform Roblox platform recently provided an answer by previewing a new advertising format, Immersive Ads. Immersive Ads make it possible for businesses to build 3D portals, where players of games on Roblox can be transported to customized virtual words. Because Roblox is considered to be one of the platforms shaping the future of the metaverse, Immersive Ads are significant and worthy of closer attention.

A Refresher: What Is the Metaverse?

The metaverse refers to an interconnected digital world where people and businesses exist through avatars. In the metaverse, avatars do everything from attend business meetings to buy goods and services using digital currencies. The term was coined decades ago in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science-fiction novel Snow Crash. Aspects of the metaverse are here already. In fact, Linden Lab launched an early version of the metaverse in 2003, Second Life, which was too far ahead of its time to gain a widespread breakthrough. But gaming platforms such as Fortnite and Roblox, where people hang out via avatars, are metaverse environments, and they have become enormously popular – they’re just not connected yet. And businesses have quickly set up shop on the metaverse. In Roblox’s virtual world, for example, a digital-only Gucci bag sold for more money than the bag would have netted in the physical world. And Walmart recently launched a metaverse environment in Roblox to sell toys to kids.

What Did Roblox Announce?

Businesses are still in the early stages of actually advertising inside the metaverse, but Roblox gave a strong glimpse at how ads will work. At the Roblox Developers Conference (RDC), the company previewed Immersive Ads, which will be launched in 2023. According to Roblox, this is an innovative 3D advertising experience that will be clearly labeled as such and will be native to the platform. Brands and developers will be able to build new ad experiences on Roblox, including portals that can seamlessly transport users back and forth between experiences. This will create new opportunities for developers to generate revenue and enable brands to reach their communities more effectively.

The video below shows how Immersive Ads will work. In the video, a Roblox character approaches a 3D portal to Vans World, which is a  virtual skatepark that Vans launched in 2021. The portal is adorned with Roblox Vans World posters. A video previewing the experience and bearing a “Sponsored” disclosure plays on a screen overhead. An avatar steps through the portal where it is transported to a branded space.

 

The experience is really not that different from how brands advertise on gaming sites, with digital signage adorning metaverse living spaces just as signs and posters do in the physical world.

According to Richard Sim, senior product director for monetization at Roblox, “If you have a bus stop or like the side of a building, you can apply that image ad to the side of the building, and it’ll just render the right creative to the right user at the right time.”

Walmart Offers New Possibilities

The opportunities for brands can become very targeted as in the above example or more immersive, which is what the new Walmart metaverse experiences promise.

Walmart’s immersive experiences – Walmart Land and Universe of Play – are virtual playgrounds where Walmart will be able to advertise toys to families. Inside Walmart Land and Universe of Play, a variety of minigames and experiences await, including a Ferris wheel, interactive piano walkway, and DJ booth. These experiences connect people (their avatars, actually) with different brands. A virtual dressing room lets you spend coins collected in Walmart Land to adorn your avatar with Skullcandy headphones or a Fitbit fitness tracker. In Universe of Play you can race Razor scooters round a track or hang out with PAW Patrol characters.

Technically there is no advertising yet in Walmart Land and Universe of Play although it’s possible for avatars to buy merchandise via tokens earned through various games. But it’s hard to imagine Walmart not capitalizing on advertising opportunities through Walmart’s fast growing advertising arm, Walmart Connect. Stay tuned!

Lessons for Brands

  • Immersive Ads show how brands can advertise and how Roblox will grow as a platform. Roblox will earn money by charging brands to create Immersive Ads, while businesses such as Vans will advertise and sell virtual goods (many brands are doing the latter already). The ads on Roblox may not be as immersive as many might expect, but Roblox is likely trying to avoid spamming its gaming community.
  • Businesses should always remember their audiences before diving into advertising on the metaverse. How attuned is your audience to immersive worlds such as the metaverse? Is marketing and advertising in the metaverse a good fit for them? Currently, the biggest audience for the metaverse skews young: Gen Zers who have grown up gaming and for whom the intricacies of a virtual world are already familiar. But some brands are addressing this divide by reaching out directly to an older cohort. Roblox, for example, has developed features to appeal to older users. And so, the attendant question to ask yourself is: do you have the energy and resources to think outside the box and woo your audience, no matter what generation they inhabit?
  • Assess your appetite for experimentation. This is a brave new world that’s constantly changing. How comfortable are you with that dynamic?
  • Learn from businesses that have been getting involved in advertising and marketing in immersive gaming worlds, which are, as noted, extremely popular in the metaverse. A really good example consists of brands that have been embracing in-game ads, as we blogged here.

Contact True Interactive

True Interactive knows how to make online advertising deliver measurable results on all platforms and apps. To learn how we can help you, contact us. Learn more about our services here.

What Does Meta’s Big Move with Horizon Worlds Mean to Brands?

What Does Meta’s Big Move with Horizon Worlds Mean to Brands?

by Max Petrungaro Meta

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that the company will help individual creators generate income in Meta’s Horizon Worlds platform. This is a significant sign that the so-called metaverse will open up ways for people to monetize the metaverse as it takes shape.

What Is the Metaverse?

The metaverse is a shared virtual world where people can work, play, and live through digital twins, or avatars. Aspects of the metaverse are here already: every time we use a digital currency, every time we hang out on Fortnite or Roblox (gaming is currently a big slice of the metaverse), we’re engaging with parts of the metaverse. They’re just not connected seamlessly yet.

Businesses such as Meta aren’t waiting for all the details to get sorted, though: they are staking a claim to this nascent world by building their own virtual worlds.

What Is Horizon Worlds?

So, what exactly is Meta trotting out? Horizon Worlds (formerly Facebook Horizon) is a free virtual reality, online video game that allows people to build and explore virtual worlds on the metaverse. In short, Horizon Worlds is one potential access point into the metaverse via a gaming platform.

Meta first published the game on its virtual reality Oculus VR headsets in the United States and Canada on December 9, 2021. This approach meant that the audience for Horizon World was necessarily limited to people who could afford a virtual reality headset (specifically, Oculus VR). But Meta is now making Horizon Worlds available even if users do not have virtual reality headsets.

What Did Meta Announce about Horizon Worlds?

Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is testing new tools that allow creators to expand their reach—and create some lucrative opportunities—within the worlds they build on Horizon Worlds. In a video, he said, “The ability to sell virtual items and access to things inside the worlds is a new part of [the] e-commerce equation overall. We’re starting rolling this out with just a handful of creators and we’ll see how it goes but I imagine that over time we’ll get to roll it out more and more.”

If there’s anything Meta wants you to take away from this development, that would be:

  • Meta is testing a way for creators to sell virtual items and experiences within their worlds.
  • Meta is also testing a Horizon Worlds Creator Bonus program.

While Meta is currently working with a handful of creators to get feedback on this initiative, the long-term plan is to create an environment in which creators can earn a living in a world of digital goods, services, and experiences. The overall vision is that the metaverse will crack possibilities for entrepreneurs—wide open. And it’s not a matter of creators being thrown into this world without a safety net or guide: a $10 million Horizon Creators Fund, announced last October, is meant to provide resources to Horizon Worlds creators.

The opportunities are certainly compelling: Meta is rolling out a test with a few creators that facilitates the selling of virtual items within their worlds. This might manifest as attachable accessories entrepreneurs create for a fashion world, say, or paid access to a new part of a creator’s world.

Meanwhile, the Horizon Worlds Creator Bonus program, meant for participants in the United States, offers bonuses in the form of goal-oriented monthly programs that reward creators with a pay-out at month’s end. The bonuses honor progress made towards the creator’s goals, and are not subject to fees (read: creators will be paid in full). While rewards may evolve, creators are currently rewarded (in the limited test) for building worlds that attract the “most time spent.”

What Does All This Mean?

This is how we read this news:

  • Horizon Worlds is yet another sign that the metaverse is getting bigger with extraordinary speed. For confirmation, one need look no further than JP Morgan, which says the metaverse is a “trillion dollar industry” in which it acknowledges “explosive interest.” They aren’t just talking the talk: the investment bank has opened a lounge in the blockchain-based virtual world Decentraland. The Onyx lounge, named for JP Morgan’s Onyx blockchain unit, includes a roaming tiger that greets visitors and a portrait of CEO Jamie Dimon, not to mention a suite of Ethereum-based services. JP Morgan’s claim to fame? That it is the first major lender to enter the metaverse.
  • It’s also an example of how businesses are empowering the so-called creator economy, a class of businesses comprising millions of independent content creators and influencers. We’re hearing about creators more partly because apps like TikTok have granted them more power and more influence.

But the creator economy stands to become even more powerful. That’s because collaboration networks are proliferating, networks that give creators an all-in-one platform to create communities and build influence. In addition, gaming sites such as Roblox and Twitch offer creators opportunities to monetize their work with potential brand partnerships, even as crypto currency sites like Rally.io empower creators to mint their own currency.

It’s a rich vein to mine, and big social networks such as Meta are responding by making themselves more attractive to creators (that brings us back to the news about Horizon Worlds and the resources Meta is making available). Going forward, more businesses will tap into niche networks to partner with emerging creators who are lesser-known but possess tremendous street cred. Will big-name partnerships with stars still thrive? Sure, but the social media icons are going to need to make room for the new kids in town.

What Brands Should Do

What does this mean for your brand? As you consider the opportunities inherent in the metaverse, we recommend that you:

  • Remember your audience. Do they care about the immersive worlds that the metaverse makes possible? That is, will marketing and advertising in the metaverse even matter to them—much less reach them? The biggest audience for the metaverse currently skews young, although some brands are making a concerted effort to reach out to older consumers. Ask yourself who your audience is, and if you have the resources and energy to reach out to them if their engagement with the metaverse represents a tougher sell.
  • Reflect on your appetite for experimentation. This is a new frontier that is already evolving. Are you ready to pivot—and pivot again—as conditions change?
  • Learn from businesses that have already found their marketing access point in immersive gaming worlds, which are, as noted, a popular segment of the metaverse.

Contact True Interactive

Want to learn more about the metaverse? Eager to dip a toe but looking for some guidance? Contact us. We can help you map a way in this new world.

Meta Misses the Mark; How Should Advertisers React?

Meta Misses the Mark; How Should Advertisers React?

by Beth Bauch Facebook Meta

Over the years, Facebook has been a Teflon brand. No matter how many controversies and setbacks the company has faced, it has seen its stock price and market capitalization soar. But all that changed on February 2 when Facebook’s parent company Meta announced earnings for the fourth quarter 2021. The company:

  • Missed its earnings estimates.
  • Reported that Facebook’s global daily active users declined from the previous quarter to 1.929 billion from 1.930 billion. Although Facebook has experienced drops in the United States before, this was the first time the world’s most popular social platform had experienced a decline in its user base.
  • Forecast weaker-than-expected revenue growth for the next quarter.
  • Said that the company would suffer a $10 billion revenue hit in 2022 because of the impact of Apple’s iPhone privacy controls launched in 2021.

Investors were stunned. The next day, Meta suffered a 26 percent drop in its stock price – the largest single-day drop in history. Not just for Meta. For any company.

Companies can have a bad quarter. But why did Meta suffer a historic drop in its stock price? There is no single, clear-cut answer. But a few factors no doubt played a role:

  • The drop in users, although not massive, stoked concerns that Facebook is finally beginning to feel the impact of its ongoing brand safety controversies and indifference from the growing Gen Z population. Losing members can be a red flag for advertisers, and Facebook needs advertising revenue to succeed.
  • Meta surprised investors by saying it still has not recovered from the impact of Apple’s consumer privacy controls. In 2021, Apple altered its operating system to require apps to get a person’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies for advertising, or sharing their data with data brokers. This move curtailed the ability for advertisers and ad platforms such as Facebook to target digital ads across the web. Ad platforms such as Snapchat and Twitter said that the restrictions were either not hurting them or that they had figured out satisfactory ways to keep creating effective ads despite the existence of the privacy controls. It was alarming to hear that Meta had not figured out a solution yet.
  • Meta’s big bet on the next generation of the internet, the metaverse, is costing the company – a lot. Meta said that the company spent $10 billion in 2021 on various products that form the building blocks of the metaverse. That spend hurt profits. And the metaverse is still many years away, which has made investors ask: just how much is the metaverse going to cost Meta?

Even still, Facebook achieved $33.67 billion in ad revenue for the quarter, which was better than expected. Should Facebook’s advertisers be concerned? As an agency that helps many businesses build their brands and convert customers through Facebook advertising, we believe that if you advertise on Facebook, you should:

  • Keep advertising on Facebook if you are satisfied with your results so far. Based on our client work, Facebook continues to drive conversions even though the cost per conversion has increased and conversion rates are lower. Facebook remains an efficient and cost-effective alternative to competing platforms.
  • Adapt to the new reality of Facebook advertising. One of the challenges with Facebook advertising under Apple’s privacy controls is having access to less user data for targeting various audience segments with ads. We’ve been working with Facebook to develop workarounds such grouping our clients’ target audiences together to give the Facebook algorithm more data to work with a (as opposed to breaking up audiences into separate groups). We’ve also removed audience exclusions from campaigns. After we aggregated audience data and removed exclusions, we gradually began to see an improvement in ad conversions following a drop resulting from the privacy controls.
  • Keep an eye on the decline in users. Understand where they’re going when they leave Facebook. In particular, Facebook said that TikTok has emerged as a much stronger competitor. TikTok is especially red hot with the Gen Z generation. In addition, monitor sentiment among your audiences, foremost your customers. In light of Facebook’s ongoing controversies over privacy and the publication of harmful content, are your customers expressing concern? Is your brand safety at risk? (This may or may not be the case. As we’ve blogged before, social media will always be a messy place to live, and many brand have learned to live alongside that reality.

Advertisers have more choices than ever – emerging apps such as TikTok, retailer ad platforms such as Amazon Advertising, to name a few. The well-established ad platforms such as Google continue to launch new products. As always, we urge advertisers to stay on top of the evolving market. At True Interactive, we advocate for our clients by understanding how the ad industry is changing so that we can maximize clients’ return on ad spend. Contact us to learn how we can help you.

Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash

Advertising and Marketing in the Metaverse

Advertising and Marketing in the Metaverse

by Max Petrungaro Advertising

The metaverse is hot. One need look no further for proof than the fact that Facebook changed its company name to Meta in October 2021. Consequently, the metaverse is one of the most talked-about topics in business right now. Companies are already figuring out how to make the most of what it has to offer. How might the metaverse help them make money? How might brands embrace advertising and marketing there?

The Metaverse Defined

As was the case with the internet back in the day, new definitions of the metaverse are constantly cropping up, from all quarters. There is a lot of speculation about the metaverse arriving in the future. But the term was actually coined decades ago in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science-fiction novel Snow Crash. Aspects of the metaverse — a shared virtual world where people can work, play, and live through digital twins, or avatars — are here already. Every time someone uses a digital currency, every time someone hangs out on Fortnite or Roblox (gaming is currently a big slice of the metaverse), we’re engaging with parts of metaverse (they’re just not yet connected seamlessly).

As the metaverse takes shape, savvy brands are already planting a flag in this rich terrain. And to do so, they are looking at things a tad differently. Brittan Heller, counsel with the American law firm Foley Hoag, puts it this way: “When you think about advertising in XR [extended reality, one of the building blocks of the metaverse], you should think about it as placement in the product instead of product placement.” Heller may be thinking of luxury brands like Louis Vuitton or Marc Jacobs, which have designed digital products for the game Animal Crossing. Or Balenciaga, which has collaborated with Fortnite to drop exclusive wearable skins for in-game characters. She notes, “An ad in virtual reality may look like buying a designer jacket for your digital avatar [but] that’s an ad for a clothing company that you are wearing on your body.” Coveted digital fashion sometimes bests even real-world counterparts: in Roblox’s virtual world, for example, a digital-only Gucci bag sold for more money than the bag would have netted in the physical world.

Some metaverse advertising, of course, falls back on real-world models. Consider games like Tiki-Taka Soccer and FIFA Mobile, which are already incorporating billboards as part of the game universe. The billboards are meant to raise awareness —just like the billboards we pass on the highway — and if players wish, they can access more intel about the product.

But there is also a concerted effort to create advertising unique to the metaverse experience. The day when users can interact freely with embodiments of a brand — an avatar for a celebrity or an existing character from, say, Disney — is not far off.

The takeaway: there are already opportunities for brands to flex advertising muscle in the metaverse, and those opportunities are growing exponentially.

What Businesses Should Do

What does this mean for your brand? Does delving into the metaverse make sense for you? As you consider these questions, we recommend that you:

  • Remember your audience first. How attuned are they to immersive worlds such as the metaverse? Is marketing and advertising in the metaverse a good fit for them? Currently, the biggest audience for the metaverse skews young: Gen Zers who have grown up gaming and for whom the intricacies of a virtual world are already familiar. But some brands are addressing this divide by reaching out directly to an older cohort. Roblox, for example, has developed features to appeal to older users. And so, the attendant question to ask yourself is: do you have the energy and resources to think outside the box and woo your audience, no matter what generation they inhabit?
  • Assess your appetite for experimentation. This is a brave new world that’s constantly changing. How comfortable are you with that dynamic?
  • Learn from businesses that have been getting involved in advertising and marketing in immersive gaming worlds, which are, as noted, extremely popular in the metaverse. A really good example consists of brands that have been embracing in-game ads, as we blogged here.

Contact True Interactive

True Interactive knows how to make online advertising deliver measurable results on all platforms and apps. To learn how we can help you, contact us. Learn more about our services here.