Metaverse Business Models For Brands And Content Creators
December 17, 2022
As more people shift their lives online, there is a greater demand for virtual worlds and digital spaces. From social media networks to cloud storage, we are continually expanding our digital presence. There is now a new future: the metaverse.
The metaverse has swiftly moved beyond being a buzzword, and its fast expansion and adoption have blurred the boundary between real and virtual worlds. In 2021, the metaverse market was worth USD 63.83 billion.
However, according to forecasts, the metaverse market size would grow from USD 100.27 billion in 2022 to USD 1.5 trillion by 2029 giving rise to a new business model for brands and content creators.
So, what is a metaverse, and what's the hype about it?
The metaverse is an emerging web3 technology that refers to an immersive virtual world similar to the internet where individuals can connect and participate in a variety of activities. It is made possible by combining virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), creating virtual worlds that can currently be explored using VR headsets.
The concept has been around for a few years, but it has gotten a lot of attention after Facebook was rebranded as Meta. Other tech titans, including Microsoft and Apple, have begun to actively invest in the metaverse, indicating that this is not just another experiment but the future.
From the standpoint of a brand, one of the key goals of the metaverse at the moment is to increase engagement between brands and their target audience. Following suit, the metaverse will open up new doors for practically all businesses.
It will also adhere to web3 principles and offer opportunities and new business models that are persistent, decentralized, interactive, and interoperable while allowing businesses to expand.
Businesses can use metaverse experiences to engage with existing users on a whole new level of personalization as well as reach new markets. Furthermore, the metaverse has the potential to revolutionize products and services, manufacturing and distribution processes, organizational activities, and much more.
Read more: Most Effective Metaverse Marketing Trends You Need To Know In 2022
What makes metaverse unique?
1. Metaverse is blurring the line between a virtual and physical world
The metaverse will close or even remove the gap between the virtual and physical worlds. The metaverse blurs the gap between virtual and real worlds by augmenting objects and environments from the real world and 3D experiences and digital assets created in the virtual world, making the user's experience in the metaverse more immersive, multi-sensory, and authentic.
2. Fast and free access
Smart wearable gadgets (such as virtual headsets or glasses) allow users to enter the metaverse instantly, regardless of time or location, thanks to the spread of high-speed networks such as 4G and resulting in free and speedy access to a metaverse platform for users by remotely and smoothly moving between the actual and virtual worlds.
3. Ability to create a functional virtual identity
Instead of using a static image, each user in the metaverse can create his or her own unique digital identity in the form of an avatar. This digital identity is more user-defined and advanced than static profile avatars; for example, users can tweak the characteristics of the avatar's face and its facial expressions, wear stylish NFT clothing, and so on. It is essentially a virtual replica that mimics the user's persona in the real world.
4. Engage in immersive and multi-sensory experiences
Metaverse technology's rich and vibrant virtual environments can provide users with a great sense of immersion. Users can interact with digital assets or products augmented from the real world by touching, controlling, or pushing them via technologies such as VR, AR, or IoT, increasing their sensory experience significantly.
Users will be able to enjoy true, immersive, and multidimensional experiences as if they were in the real world, if not more than the real world, thanks to the metaverse.
6 new business models for brands and content creators to capitalize on opportunities in the metaverse
1. Marketing and advertising
Metaverse provides a unique and innovative framework for advertising that has never been explored before. It bridges the gap between displaying ads to targeted consumers on social media, movies, or television commercials and generating immersive virtual experiences in which users can participate in numerous activities via their digital avatars.
This will enable them to feel like they are a part of the virtual experience. It also opens up new opportunities for businesses, as they can now construct a two-way communication channel and connect directly with users via their avatars, rather than relying on traditional marketing tactics like advertising on social media print advertising, or television advertisements.
Read more: Marketing opportunities in the Metaverse
Several brands have already begun selling virtual goods via NFTs and developing immersive digital experiences within the metaverse.
Read more: How are brands embracing marketing in the Metaverse?
2. Healthcare
Metaverse technology can potentially be used in the healthcare sector. By bridging the gap between patients and doctors, it has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry. It has the promise of opening up a new channel of communication between healthcare professionals and patients while maintaining the patient's convenience.
This is especially useful in rural areas, distant locations, and post-disaster settings where healthcare structures are unreliable.
For example, using the metaverse, we can establish virtual hospitals with doctors, allowing patients and clinicians from anywhere in the globe to meet in a 3D virtual office for a fast inspection while sitting on their sofas at home.
Furthermore, in emergency situations, healthcare practitioners can use the metaverse to administer emergency healthcare without having to go to the impacted areas and collaborate more effectively globally on disease research.
Metaverse can also be utilized for educational purposes, as students can access detailed 3D pictures of human body parts, allowing them to simulate real-world medical operations in virtual reality.
Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, uses high-fidelity, multiplayer VR simulation to develop life-saving lab skills. Students enter a virtual lab to interact with teachers and practice soldering tubes, removing bag tops, and labeling bags with limitless retakes.
3. Education
Short, on-demand video courses are an example of the "micro-learning" trend that has emerged in response to the rise of mobile computing and social media. These websites and platforms could one day be replaced by a digital 3D metaverse in which we interact as lifelike avatars.
The metaverse can enable an immersive college experience, in which students wearing virtual reality headsets attend a virtual campus or institution to learn, explore, and interact.
Learners can, for example, explore different learning pods, visit libraries and breakout rooms, meet mentors and advisors, and socialize with others in this digital world. It submerges learners in an immersive environment in which they can engage in interesting activities, making learning more enjoyable.
Moreover, the metaverse has the potential to increase educational and social access for people with disabilities. An immersive environment, for example, allows young adults with special needs, autism, and social interaction challenges to develop their interpersonal and work abilities.
They can practice these abilities and communicate with others in a safe atmosphere through the metaverse without feeling overwhelmed or anxious.
Instructors can also invite influential people or people of knowledge and wisdom in the virtual realm of the metaverse to share their life experiences with students. They can participate in interesting panel discussions, conferences, and lectures. Various events, such as exhibitions and festivals, can also be held to assist them to rejuvenate their thoughts.
The Metaverse has the potential to really democratize education by bringing people from diverse economic backgrounds and geographically separated areas together to learn in a cost-effective, flexible, and faster manner.
4. Gaming
Metaverse platforms are creating a massive hype in the gaming industry. The gaming industry is one of the major sectors that is making use of the Metaverse features to offer a next-generation gaming experience to the users.
97% of gaming executives believe the gaming industry is the center of the metaverse today and 48% think that metaverses are creating opportunities for new business models.
Metaverse gaming is revolutionizing the cyberspace of gaming into an interactive and engaging platform by offering immersive environments. platforms create an illusion for a realistic experience using 3D images, VR headsets, full display screens, and rooms with sensory features of scents and tactile sensations
The metaverse leverages AR and MR to provide a more organic experience. Gaming in the Metaverse could incorporate mixed reality, where users move from group text in AR to an MR board game to a full-fledged Metaverse Virtual Reality world in a seamless workflow.
5. Virtual real estate
Metaverse use blockchain technology to maintain ownership data in the form of an NFT, or non-fungible token. NFT plots of land in virtual worlds are referred to as metaverse real estate. Like ordinary real estate, properties in the metaverse can be bought, sold, or developed, and their owners can lease them out to others.
They are programmable areas in virtual reality platforms where individuals can mingle, play games, sell NFTs, hold conferences, attend virtual concerts, and engage in a variety of other virtual activities.
Brands can leverage their virtual properties to promote services, introduce virtual products, and deliver unique customer experiences. These digitized pieces of land present a profitable possibility for real estate investors. Metaverse properties, like real-life properties, can be developed, flipped, or leased.
6. Virtual goods
Metaverse has the potential to develop into a thriving commercial world, equipped with crypto wallets for buying and selling goods. This means that products from offline stores might be reproduced for users anywhere in the world, erasing geographic limitations and allowing sales to occur instantly in all parts of the world.
Several consumer businesses have already ventured into virtual worlds to market their wares as digital objects. Nike, Gucci, and even Taco Bell are all on the list. Consumers spend thousands of dollars on virtual clothes and collectibles. Even physical stores are utilizing metaverse technologies. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are infiltrating hundreds of retail companies throughout the world.
The metaverse's purchase opportunities are only limited by people's imaginations. If you can add value to anything, you can sell it. Some systems enable you to buy a tangible item via a virtual shopping experience.
Build your brand inside the metaverse
Metaverse is a virtual world that links global customers through a shared digital platform for interaction and socialization. Entrepreneurs and business executives stand to benefit from investigating and developing in the metaverse.
It's a unique and original method to expand your business and get more views on your products and services. There are numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs, ranging from developing games and apps to selling virtual land or even clothes. The metaverse is brimming with possibilities.
It is the fusion of our physical and digital existence. It's our digital lifestyles, which we've been living on phones or computers, that are gradually catching up to our actual lives in some way so that full convergence is possible.
The metaverse allows brands and corporations to establish fully formed and specified worlds that follow their own set of rules.
Businesses that recognize this will also recognize that just reproducing the real world (or their original business models) by creating digital twins of reality may miss out on the larger potential to build new metaverse-specific products or services, as well as new income streams.
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