Marketing Briefing: Marketers are going all in on metaverse marketing, but is it premature?

The metaverse has recently motivated some marketers to experiment with AR and VR again. Maybe the years and years of marketers and agency execs touting AR and VR as the next big thing were just a few years too early? Or maybe agency execs are trying to spin it that way to make those experiments worthy of their time? Time will tell.

“The criticism that the metaverse is Emperor’s new clothes version of Second Life is a reasonable one, but it ignores some fundamental factors that make this new era potentially as important in changing the landscape for marketers as the emergence of TV or the open internet,” said Berlin Cameron, Founder, Ewen Cameron.

Cameron continued: “Blockchain technology and the tokenization of assets that are built on it, creates the potential for customization and personalization of marketing on a scale we’ve never seen before in history.”

Even as Cameron is bullish on the possibilities of the metaverse — and NFTs and Web3 — for marketers he recognizes the metaverse in its current form may not deliver the needed return on investment for all marketers. 

“Today the metrics of Decentraland may only make sense in ROI if your target audience is teenage males with a propensity for fantasy gaming,” said Cameron. “However, the applications of blockchain technology, Web3 and the metaverse offer endless possibilities for brands. These technologies help marketers find new, breakthrough pathways to awareness and engagement before and better than their competition, which is what good marketing is all about.”