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

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.