Presented by LandVault
It’s time for companies to decide the role they will play in the metaverse: be part of the wave, or merely watch how it plays out. It’s not a simple decision. Learn more about the opportunity sitting in front of bold business leaders today in this VB On-Demand event.
The metaverse and its potential have captured our collective imagination. The problem is, many brands jumped in early, either for hype or FOMO, without having a more strategic and longer-term view on what it means. So misconceptions about the space have arisen, with some thinking that it’s simply a place to drum up awareness in a one-time experience, and not much else.
“When Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, it generated a lot of attention, but it also failed to deliver concrete answers on what that rebranding means and what kind of experience it will deliver for users,” says Sebastien Borget, co-founder and COO of The Sandbox.
There are still very few virtual worlds with real experiences and content for users to engage with, which is where companies like The Sandbox come in, delivering on the promise to engage users in socialization and play across the platform.
“We’ve proven time and again, that you can drive sales through some of those experiences,” says Samuel Huber, founder and CEO of LandVault. “The Fashion Week experience we did in a platform called Decentraland generated multiple millions of dollars in revenue from customers who decided to buy virtual goods. That’s something that’s been repeated over and over. By crafting the right experience, you can generate revenue.”
With blockchain and crypto built into the platform, unlocking the possibility of seamless transactions, any brand can build an experience that also becomes a revenue stream. But crypto is another source of misconception, with many companies believing that the platform requires technical knowledge, a crypto background, or even crypto investment to get started.
Services like LandVault and others are rapidly springing up to abstract that layer, making it possible to build without a long-term investment — without ever using anything but fiat currency.
“We’ve managed to show brands that, yes, it’s a new platform, but it’s not a scary platform,” Huber added. “It’s a new channel, a new tool they can leverage. Nothing that is drastically different from the changes we’ve been through before with social media. Just a new tool that enables them to create much richer experiences, and also leverage this new creator economy.”
The brands that are most successful are the ones that see it as not just a one-off experience, but a way to set themselves up for success in the next phase of the internet. They’re the ones that believe Web3 is the future of the internet and they’re getting a head start on being relevant to the upcoming two billion strong Generation Alpha, which was essentially born playing games, and understands crypto natively.
In the short term, metrics like dwell time and engagement in the kind of mini-gaming experiences that are completely unique to the platform show that it’s possible to capture the undivided attention of consumers for unheard of lengths of time.
“We’re creating a new paradigm shift in terms of metrics,” Borget says. “We don’t just want to have a million people who like a piece of content, but only spend three or five seconds with it. We want people to spend time, and have users who stay engaged over time. When you spend 20 minutes on average, this is meaningful.”
One LandVault customer saw users spending 29 minutes engaging with the company’s metaverse experience, compared to a second or two when they are seeing an advertisement, Huber says.
“What can you do with 29 minutes? How much can you educate customers with the brand, make them fall in love with the brand, maybe even sell them something or give them rewards?” he says. “This opens up new opportunities for marketing, even though they might not believe that the metaverse is the future of the internet. They might not have that 10-year vision, but there’s still something that they can do today.”
In the alpha season 3 of Sandbox, the company saw 70 million visits in total, and 40,000 active users on a daily basis, even though Sandbox isn’t currently on mobile, Borget says. Some of the most popular experiences had between several hundred thousand to a million visits, and users spent more than 20 minutes on average per session, and 80 minutes per day.
Though we’re facing a recession and seeing dropping valuations in the crypto and tech market, the metaverse market is still growing, with increased adoption from users, brands launching activations and a growing global ecosystem of studios around the world developing experiences for brands and projects, Borget says.
“It’s just a matter of time,” he adds. “It’s a matter of focusing on the right value proposition for users and not just trying to monetize them. The metaverse is a way to increase engagement with the audience, to give back control, and empower brands to own their data, own their relationship with their customers or loyal fans and bring new users into it. It offers more immersion, value and things that can’t be done in the real world to draw their audience, who are looking for a very personalized experience.”
For more on the ways brands can capture and monetize this metaverse opportunity, deliver unique engagement experiences and set up for success in the long term and more, watch this VB On-Demand event now.
Watch free on-demand right here!
Agenda
- Identifying opportunities in the metaverse: distinguishing the hype from reality
- Best practices and missteps to avoid
- How to approach your brand’s metaverse strategy
- How the metaverse economy will be accelerated
- And more!
Presenters
- Sébastien Borget, Co-founder & COO, The Sandbox
- Samuel Huber, Founder & CEO, LandVault
- Victor Dey, Tech Editor, VentureBeat (moderator)
