Even if Meta’s one-year anniversary in late October of 2022 didn’t exactly spell success for Facebook’s rebranding and Mark Zuckerberg’s particular vision, given the company’s continuous lowering in quarterly profits and reports of massive amounts of investment being flushed away, it’s undeniable that 2022 was a landmark year for the technology itself.

Brands across the spectrum, from Nike to SAP with everything from Coca-Cola, Wendy’s, Balenciaga, Adidas, and Ferrari in between introduced their own versions and visions of the immersive, interactive platform, with brands and agencies alike touting its virtues, even while admitting this is still very much the beginning stages of the metaverse. However, the future potential is endless.

Mitesh Kothari, Co-founder and CCO, White Rivers Media also believes technology will adjust to meet changing consumer expectations, and customers will find new ways to use the developed technology.  “It becomes a chain reaction of development. With the advent of 5G, consumption of the metaverse and its many new use cases will multiply as the network guarantees better speed, consistent coverage, low latency, and reliable communication. With technological development and the rise in demand, the new VR and AR headsets will be more reasonably priced and thus easily accessible,” he says.

Krutin Shah, Co-founder and COO, Phyvital Inc, points out that 5G and better handsets will certainly help with adoption and make it easy for brands to get to consumers. “We believe brands should look for multiple formats to get most of the audience engagement (for instance, metaverse live events, gaming, streaming of content, as well as educational content). These formats will thrive and capture younger audiences, the next generation of spenders.”

Whole New World

Kothari notes that when it comes to the diversification of the metaverse, brands can use virtual communities to establish, develop, and maintain relationships with potential customers. He says, “All of these actions will contribute to developing a solid relationship with customers and their loyalty, eventually improving business profitability and sustainability. Metaverse can prove to be the "digital twin" — a virtual representation of real-world products, operations, and more. This will help in developing new ideas securely and economically. Overall, the future looks bright for metaverse and brands ready to leverage it.”

Experts point out that today an average person enjoys a very powerful 2D virtual world, and has already gained so much from it in terms of productivity, range of choices, lifestyle advantages, quality of entertainment and so many other dimensions.

“There is a whole set of paradigms that will take the main stage before the centre of mass moves to the metaverse - text conversations, video commerce, augmented reality, virtual reality and others that may surprise us. Irrespective, every business needs to start building the necessary skills for this three-dimensional interactive, automated world. There is a lot of innovation that is already happening in terms of enabling technologies for graphic rendering, avatars, integrations with the real world,” says Krishna.

Manish Solanki, COO, and Co-founder, TheSmallBigIdea, says, "Similar to working with characters in video games, but in a much-evolved environment, the metaverse is going to transform our business and social interactions. It will be the real and virtual worlds coming together to create valuable assets. From healthcare to virtual offices and real estate to retail, the metaverse is set to change the way we interact and communicate.”

Speed, computing power and more accessible devices (AR or MR-equipped glasses) are key components to operate in the metaverse; as virtual games can be considered the closest real-world examples, currently and literally in play. Once these three elements come together, creators, as well as advertisers, are going to find a huge market of consumers, led by Gen Z and Gen Alpha cohorts to lead the charge, in becoming a captive audience.

Danish Malik Co-Founder, and CEO of Boomlet Media Private Limited, points out that if there is a well-built consumer base, then market forces will impel brands to do their campaigns through metaverses.

“I think the easiest way to get into metaverse is to expand into multiple entertainment categories, online gaming has a significant popularity under metaverse and so is fashion/stores are putting their best foot forward but there is no such segment of entertainment under metaverse,” he says, concluding, “So metaverse can diversify and spread out more from the online gaming to the entertainment side where any individual can create UGC base content. If there is a rise in user-generated content (UGC) then most certainly the consumer base will increase and in turn the market for the metaverse.”