GamesBeat Summit: What brands need to understand about the metaverse

venturebeat.com:

The metaverse is big news throughout the game industry, and for brands overall. The question is becoming, how can brands get traction in the metaverse as it starts to take hold in the real world? On the first day of GamesBeat Summit 2022, three brand experts and metaverse converts took the stage with Brett Sappington, VP at global consumer insights company Interpret, to discuss this and other big questions as the promise of the metaverse looms larger.

“It’s important for brands to partake now, because that’s where our audiences are going,” said Angelic Vendette, VP and head of marketing at Alo Yoga, the Los Angeles-based premium yoga apparel company. “As all good marketers would tell you, you want to meet your audiences where they are.”

Brands should jump in now just to test and learn as the community and technology evolves, right from the get-go, growing as it grows, but authenticity is key.

“A lot of the rules for engaging with people in games are the same for engaging with people in the metaverse,” said Gabrielle Heyman, head of global brand partnerships at Zynga. “Authenticity is extremely important. Being additive to the gameplay. Making their experience better. You see a lot of the activations in the metaverse, the current Web 2.0 metaverse, are giving value to consumers.”

History has shown that if you were early on in social media, you disproportionately benefited from that. At the early stages of any network, there’s less competition, it’s easier to stand out, and it’s easier to learn, added Samuel Huber, founder and CEO of Admix, the prominent games monetization platform.

“We see the metaverse as, effectively, a new channel to reach an audience,” he said. “And whether it’s Roblox or Sandbox or Decentraland, they all