If you’ve heard Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s voice in the past year or so, chances are you heard the word “Metaverse” tossed around. The concept isn’t a new or even novel one from the Facebook CEO, but he has definitely made the most drastic push to make it a reality.
While Zuckerberg calls it “the next step in the internet”, it would be more apt, at least for Meta’s purposes to call it the next step in social media, offering a new landscape for social media, which means a new landscape for social media marketing.
What is the Metaverse?
The greater public is somewhat aware of the Metaverse, but even Meta hasn’t been great at explaining the details.
The Metaverse will be a platform that you can access with virtual reality. Virtual reality is a big name in gaming, where games are made more immersive, literally walking down a creepy corridor or shooting at virtual enemies with your own arms, for example. But the Metaverse will focus on the communication aspect of the internet. With video calling now taking off, Zuckerberg expects that his Facebook and Instagram users will be excited to host virtual meetings with friends, family, and colleagues and meet up for a chat, a game, a meeting, etc.
So how will this affect marketing? Let’s break it down.
Virtual reality
If you were to take it at face value, virtual reality offers a range of basic and traditional marketing techniques to a new place. To take the term used above literally, virtual reality offers a new landscape for marketing, which means virtual billboards, virtual pre-roll ads, even virtual sponsorship on everything from football kits to gig merchandise.
Plus, virtual reality will offer new ways to create marketing content that we might not even imagine right now. The concept is still in its very early stages, and we so far are only applying old techniques from online marketing into a new space, but the virtual space might create its own opportunities once it gets its feet on the ground. In fact, some of them are starting to emerge.
Virtual influencers
There is a concept on YouTube, an entire genre of creators called V-Tubers. It stands for “virtual YouTuber” and is an influencer that is streaming or recording with an avatar standing in for them, expressing and moving with the use of real-time motion capture. These avatars for the stereotype of the genre are usually anime-styled or otherwise very cartoonish in nature, where it’s obvious that the thing you are looking at isn’t a real person.
Whereas, on Instagram, there is a rising trend in virtual influencers or VIs. Avatars representing the influencers here are photorealistic and some are almost impossible to decipher from a real person. Sometimes no real person is involved in the role of influencer at all, and the avatar is instead puppeteered by a marketing team like a brand mascot.
Content will change
There is already a shifting perspective on what makes for quality marketing content right now, with the acceptance of short-form video content forcing marketers to keep their audiences’ attention with fun, engaging content rather than a list of their item’s benefits.
A part of that is its presentation. Content has to be curated for the platform it is appearing on (for example, there is a big difference between making content for YouTube and Instagram), and the virtual world will be no different. Marketers will have to learn not only what kind of content will engage an audience, but how to make that content in a new format that usually features a split panoramic view, 360-degree access, occasionally 3D, and will need a piece of equipment to see and interact with.
Community guidelines
Meta is getting smartly ahead of one aspect of the virtual reality world and that is regulations. Although they cannot enact anything into law, they are currently establishing their own community guidelines to ensure that ethical marketing measures are taken.
It will be an attempt to avoid mistakes of the past, where regulations had to come in concerning marketing algorithms, clearly labeling marketing material, and, most notoriously, the mining of consumer data for the sake of marketing, which has scarred Facebook’s reputation.
But, as outlined, the virtual reality space will create a lot of new marketing opportunities, not all of them ethical. For example, there is the concept of deep fakes, where someone’s face can be superimposed on a piece of content, creating the opportunity to fake a celebrity endorsement.
Affiliate marketers, in particular, will be interested to learn that their click-through rates will now be replaced with “gaze-through rates”, shifting where they get their results from.
If you’re looking for affiliate marketing advice or more on Facebook and the Metaverse, take a look at our blog, or for more personalised advice, book a free call with a member of our team.
