The metaverse is coming. And it’s likely to be widely adopted by both consumers and advertisers. In this post, we’ll look at the possible implications for the consumer-advertiser relationship.
Experiences over impressions
The metaverse may contain physical billboards and placements for your traditional ad units – but the crux of the success in Meta, will be based on the experiences you create for your consumers, not the ad units you display to them.
Impressions, clicks, and similar ad metrics are the pinnacle of today’s measurement, but that should rapidly change as engagement is poised to become a much larger factor in successful meta experiences.
Let’s say you’re a tennis racket provider: In today’s present world, you may meet people at the point of intent – when they are searching for tennis rackets to buy in Google – your campaigns will likely then retarget those users in multiple networks until a purchase is acquired or those users are moved into a non purchase based segment.
In Meta, your ad campaigns will look wildly different. In meta this same racket provider may opt to build a VR environment that loads up near local tennis courts in your area – in this VR environment the possibilities are endless. You could theoretically have your users pick up a scale replica of your racket and genuinely test its capabilities against a digital opponent, on a real tennis court. If this physics engine is appropriately designed, theoretically you will have designed an actual testing environment for consumers – who will then have the option to purchase based on their experience – or to be later retargeted in other networks.
It’s [the metaverse] a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces. You can kind of think about this as an embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at. We believe that this is going to be the successor to the mobile internet.
Mark Zuckerberg
Imagine test driving a vehicle. Similar to playing a video game like Gran Turismo, this test drive would contain the real life physics of the car in question – which would allow you to experience the car model in its full functionality without leaving the seat of your home.
Back to the basics?
In a way, this brings us back to the basics of advertising. How do you capture a consumers attention and motivate them to buy. How do you do this in a way that’s new and exciting to prospects, and in a way that’s differentiated from your competitors?
These are all questions that traditional marketers ask. And questions that truly fell by the wayside for a lot of advertisers over the years – the advertisers who found success in pure play intent – to – click marketing. By measuring and optimizing on site performance for conversion rates, CTR, and other similar metrics – we as marketers lose focus of the core value proposition, which is:
Why do consumers love our brand/product?
I will assure you, that none of your customers love you because you have a great CTR, because you were placed precisely in google when they were looking, or because your on site experience was the best. Your customers love you because your product or service actually fulfilled a need for that person, and it was marketed to them in a way that clearly articulated their needs against the benefits of the product. They’ve purchased based on trusted influence, or seek you out for that reason.
Building experiences in the metaverse will help companies dig into the heart of that very reason, by creating user based experiences that motivate individuals to participate with the brand, and form long lasting relationships with the business itself.
Placement, impression, clicks, these are now antiquated metrics in this world. Engagement value is bound to become a paramount measure of success – and similar to streams in Spotify, this may actually become a deeper revenue generating mechanism for businesses – rather than pure play advertising streams.
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