On October 28, 2021, the company name was changed to Meta Platforms (Meta). The reason for the change is to focus more on the development of Metaverse, which is expected to grow in the future, rather than Facebook, whose business performance is deteriorating. Only the company name will be changed, the SNS name will remain the same. Facebook’s company name change to Meta at the end of 2021 became global news and triggered the Metaverse to attract attention from the public. Meta has announced that it will invest over 1 trillion yen annually in the Metaverse area. This suggests that they are serious about developing business in the Metaverse area. If you engage in marketing industry, you may have heard of this word, but if not, this word sounds unfamiliar. Metaverse refers to a three-dimensional virtual space on the Internet where people can carry out various activities. In the Metaverse, users can access the Metaverse space in the form of their own alter egos called avatars and conduct communication and economic activities with other users. For example, you can get together and have conversations, enjoy events, sports, shopping. The Metaverse market is expected to show significant growth overseas in the future. The global metaverse market size is approximately 68 trillion yen as of 2020, and approximately 111 trillion yen in 2024. The Metaverse market size in Japan is approximately 74.4 billion yen as of fiscal 2021 and is expected to grow at an annual rate of 170% thereafter to approximately 1 trillion yen by 2026. Factors contributing to the market growth in recent years include the continued decline in price and size of VR devices such as Meta Quest, and the successive emergence of hit content centered on games such as Fortnite. recently, Apple released the Apple Vision Pro, which attracted huge attention from all over the world.
Image by Bernard Marr & Co.
Advantages of adapting metaverse marketing
The biggest advantage of Metaverse Marketing is that there are no physical constraints such as space or number of people, and a large number of people can participate. By using Metaverse for marketing as a company, you will be able to reach many people as a social place while communicating without first-hand contact. And also, this is an online platform, which can easily focus on and separate marketing targets according to gender nationalities, and age. As for the marketing strategy which adapts Metaverse, there are mainly 2 types of business model. One is a model that providing the platform and developing in-house as a service and receive usage fees. The other is a model that generates revenue by selling products, advertising, and other marketing activities on the platform.
Difficulties of Metaverse in reality
There are some difficulties to take advantage of METAVERSE as a business field. First, there are not enough people who can access to the Metaverse. Since the Metaverse’s main activities are online, the penetration rate and understanding rate of the Internet differs depending on the country and generation. One of the benefits is that people all over the world can access the metaverse at the same time, but the user access environment and understanding are also difficult to understand. The other reason is that monetize. Lack of monetization is a very serious problem in business. In order to continue business, it is necessary for people to constantly gather in a virtual space, but this is not currently possible. Furthermore, the products and services we offer are merely extensions of the real world, and the current situation is that we are unable to provide value on the Metaverse that would make users pay for it.
Metaverse marketing’s future
I mentioned some difficulties about Metaverse, yet it is analyzed that these challenges can be overcome with the recent development of VR machines and technology. According to the Gartner’s analyzation, concludes that by 2026, a quarter of people will spend more than an hour a day in the metaverse for the purpose of education, business, and entertainment. Furthermore, they also anticipate that the Metaverse will not be owned by a single vendor but will become a new digital economy enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The Metaverse will impact every business that consumers interact with every day. The metaverse also affects the way we work. By implementing an immersive workspace (virtual office powered by immersive technology) environment in the virtual office, companies can provide employees with better opportunities for engagement, collaboration, and connection. Additionally, since Metaverse provides a framework, there is no need to build your own infrastructure to run your business. Additionally, virtual events, which have gained popularity over the past year and a half, will offer more collaborative and immersive connection opportunities and workshops than ever before.
