The Metaverse is the next frontier, a way for individuals to express themselves freely and for advertisers to land unprecedented outreach in a world with no borders – but it also doesn’t exist yet.
Despite being the buzzword of the decade and making appearances in every industry from tech to sales, the Metaverse isn’t a real thing right now. According to a recent report from media group Essence, the idea of a fully digital world with interwoven sections linking different brands, elements of life and locations is still just that – an idea.
It’s an instance of the hype not matching the reality. According to a study from Bloomberg, the Metaverse is estimated to have sat at around US$478.7 billion (AU$691.67 billion) in 2020, and could exceed US$800 billion (AU$1,155 billion) by 2024. Yet, half of Aussies don’t understand the concept.
On top of that, users aren’t exactly jumping on board the current offerings of the Metaverse. Estimations have the current number of daily active users for Axie Infinity at 107,240, The Sandbox at 1,180, and Decentraland at 978. These numbers pale in comparison to social media giants like Twitter with 229 million daily active users and Facebook at a whopping 1.93 billion.
A number of existing Metaverse options have been compared to video games, and some of them quite literally are. Despite this, the two leading options in Metaverse-esque gaming aren’t exactly crushing it in numbers, either – Roblox reported 54.1 million daily active users for the first quarter of 2022, and Fortnite daily active users for 2022 so far is 24.2 million.
So the public isn’t exactly jumping on the current offerings – fair enough, given that the Metaverse isn’t even real yet. These aren’t a single interconnected world for everyone to enjoy, they’re enclosed spaces for companies to test what is currently possible. Essence’s report suggests that even though the numbers aren’t fantastic currently, it’s not going to stay that way once the digital realm catches up to expectations.
As an advertiser, should you be sinking billions into the Metaverse at present? Ideally not, given that we’re likely a number of years off the final product that companies have been pitching for some time now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be testing the waters at all. Getting a head-start on exploring the digital realm could be handy once the Metaverse roars into life, but given it’s currently barely whispering you may want to slow the pace of spending.
