While there are a fair share of cynics ready to write-off the metaverse before it has a chance to crawl out of its crib, many marketers remain believers. Forty-six percent of consumer branding professionals tell Forrester Research they will be upping their metaverse budgets in 2023, while only 12 percent plan to spend less. But generative AI seems to have stolen some of its thunder, with FactSet reporting AI was mentioned on 163 March earnings calls, up from seven in March 2022. The metaverse got 35 mentions, down from 112 the previous year.

“Marketers aren’t immune to the enthusiasm over AI, which the industry is eyeing for everything from developing campaign ideas to deciding where ads should run,” reports The Wall Street Journal, noting that “51 percent of marketers named AI as their biggest tech investment priority” as compared to “8 percent who placed the metaverse at the top of the list.”

Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who ushered in the concept of a commercial metaverse when he renamed Facebook, “has shifted his focus at least in part to the industry’s new obsession: artificial intelligence,” WSJ writes.

While the metaverse may be costly to build, it’s economical to play in, and “campaigns’ potential value can outweigh their modest price tags, even when they are less effective than envisaged,” WSJ writes, explaining “the cost of building many sponsored games in Roblox can range from $100,000 to $300,000, and brands can create a line of virtual goods on the platform for a low five-figure sum.”

Mastercard, which last year hosted a virtual red carpet for the Grammy Awards on Roblox and created a Pride Month plaza in Decentraland, “plans to fund more branded metaverse experiences,” according to WSJ, which quotes company CMO Raja Rajamannar saying that “beyond the buzz, beyond the novelty value, there is a lot of possibility.”

Roblox, which lets players cavort as avatars in “millions of 3D virtual experiences” is tracking toward “double the number of branded worlds it hosts this year after recording about 100 in 2022,” WSJ writes. Roblox meta mavens include PacSun, the Dave & Buster’s restaurant-and-games chain and designer Samuel Jordan, who goes by Builder Boy on the platform.

Tokyo-based cosmetics firm Shiseido says it’s found that consumers engage with brands more in a metaverse setting than on traditional social media platforms.

“When you think about seven or eight precious minutes with a consumer [versus] how lucky you are to get maybe six seconds of someone’s attention on a platform like an Instagram or a TikTok, I think it’s very easy to validate” the metaverse as “a qualitative engagement,” said Dina Fierro, SVP of the Shiseido Americas Web3/Metaverse Group.

The metaverse “has been growing since 2020 and is predicted to hit $800 billion by 2024,” according to MarketScale, which says Gen Z currently makes up about 60 percent of metaverse users.

Related:
Metaverse, Web 3.0 and NFTs: What Marketers Need to Know, MarTech, 3/14/23
Building a Great Customer Experience in the Metaverse, Harvard Business Review, 4/3/23
Why Clinique’s Next Move in the Metaverse Is a Winning Formula for Web3 Retail, Forbes, 3/20/23