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One of the applications of virtual land in Decentraland is the placement of space for outdoor advertising. In this article, we are sharing with you the first-hand experience that Andrey Lapushkin, a meta universes enthusiast from Maff Media had while aiming to place advertisements in the Decentraland metaverse. We also look further into the top niches that can be advertised in the metaverse currently and also the way top brands are undertaking paid and organic marketing in the metaverses.
Andrey stumbled upon one of the advertising sites for Decentraland called Metaverse Direct and decided to test it, here is his experience.
The Ad buying process
To buy ads on the metaverse, Andrey went to Metaverse Direct to pay for ad placements in the metaverse, the platform publishes ads directly in the Decentraland Meta universe. The advertising platform provides an opportunity to choose a period from 1 day to 15 days. And immediately shows what the link to the image with its display will look like. The cost for each ad slot is $5 for 1 day.
It lets you insert a link to the image and the number of days you’d want to advertise.
After adding a link and choosing the display period, you then have to click on the “Buy ad slot for $5” button which transfers you to a SpankPay cryptocurrency payment service in the back end. Here you can choose to pay with any of the following cryptocurrencies: ETH, BTC, LTC, USDC.
Note: The SpankPay service positions itself as a tool for the Adult industry. However, this does not mean that it can only be used for these purposes. The case of paying for advertising in the Decentraland metaverse shows that if the service is convenient, then it can be used for other purposes.
Andrey chose to pay with Ethereum (ETH) and the service automatically calculated the ETH equivalent for $5 and showed the wallet where to send the cryptocurrency.
If your browser has the MetaMask plugin, the platform will open it for payment immediately. This is quite easy because the address for ETH transfers as well as the appropriate quantity of ETH will already be included. This time, the network commission was $1.90.
After the transaction was approved, Andrey needed to wait for one confirmation on the network to consider the purchase successful. He decided to make sure everything was fine and switched to the Ethereum blockchain explorer to check his wallet, went into the last transactions, and saw that it had already been confirmed with the status “Success”.
Problems after paying for the advertisements
After completing the payment, he went back to the site and updated the page and somehow how found that the ad was not displaying.
He had decided that it gets displayed in Decentraland at coordinates [27, -33] but he didn’t see the advertising banner there. All he saw was a thin white line.
Solving the issue
Andrey had to search for the contact of the owner of Metaverse Direct, and chat with him to get this issue solved.
He went to the Decentraland marketplace to find the owner of the site and the land in the universe. He placed the land coordinates in the search, [27,-33], but it turned out that those coordinates ended up on a road. And it’s only the creators of the metaverse who own the roads.
Part of Roads - the virtual world coordinates were close to a road
He then decided to search around the area place, since the location was somewhere near the road. The required coordinates turned out to be very close - [26,-33]. The username of the owner of the virtual land was Treetop.
“By clicking on the name, you can see what virtual things belong to this user. In addition to various items of clothing, he has the name treetop on the Ethereum network on his cryptocurrency wallet. This means that he is the owner of the treetop.eth domain. It was already giving me something.”, Andrey says.
Andrey then had to search for him off the metaverse. So he entered this name in a search engine it immediately matched a Twitter account with this name.
“At first glance, the account didn’t look like that of a virtual landowner with the same name. I took a closer look at the profile and moved on to his Society of Lost Elves NFT project.
The link to the project's Discord in the profile header suggested that the user could be found there. Since he is the creator of this collection. And so it turned out.
By searching in the discord community of the "Society of Lost Elves" NFT-project, I discovered the user Treetop. I wrote to him, indicating where I found it and what problem I encountered. I tried to make sure that everything was immediately clear from the message and that it did not look like spam. And then Treetop promised to work on it.”, Andrey explains.
Result
After a manual update by Treetop, everything started working as it should. Andrey went back to coordinates [27,-33] in Decentraland and the banner was displayed exactly as intended. Treetop also offered him 5 more free days of displaying the ad because of the trouble.
After solving the problem, Andrey decided to check on it again on the advertising platform and he saw that this time the thumbnail of his image was being properly shown. The platform also shows that the banner will hang until April 3, since Treetop added 5 days.
Key takeaway
This analysis by Andrey proves to everyone that advertising in the Metaverse is possible and it works. Banners can be bought and placed through ad buying platforms like metaversedirect.com.
This is also a great case study for building automated systems for the metaverses for entrepreneurs who are interested in exploring this area. It also shows that the problems that Andrey encountered as an advertiser can be solved.
Top niches that can be advertised in the metaverses
Advertising in the metaverses is the next big thing in crypto and in the advertising world itself. Today it still looks like in the 1990s, when advertisers were doubting the potential of advertising on websites and later on in the 2000s, everybody wanted to catch up. The same situation is happening with advertising in the metaverses.
Currently, the top businesses that are mainly advertised in the metaverses are businesses in the blockchain technology industry. These businesses include;
Other variants of advertising in the metaverses
Metaverse companies and virtual world platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, Decentraland, Somnium Space, and Animal Crossing, have built strong capabilities for marketers looking to experiment with both paid and organic advertising.
Paid advertising in the metaverses
Paid advertising in the metaverses can be done by approaching Adtech companies that sell banner placements in high traffic locations in the metaverses like;
These Adtech companies work in different virtual world companies to deliver your ads, and some do monetize their own virtual real estate locations with the ad placements.
The case study above by Andrey is a clear example of paid advertising in the Metaverses, and for his case, he used metaverse direct to display his advert in Decentraland.
Organic advertising in the metaverses
With organic advertising, an individual or a company has to buy land or digital real estate in a specific virtual world and build up advertising assets and infrastructure at coordinates that will attract many gamers and metaverse users to explore. They can then place banners on billboards, buildings, sidewalks, theme parks, in-game virtual worlds, virtual stores, and so forth, without having the urge to pay for advertising space as Andrey did.
“In certain metaverse realms, opening such virtual hubs is becoming a huge business. Platforms like The Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Somnium Space are all virtual worlds specializing in this field and allow users to buy or rent digital real estate using cryptocurrencies.
Celebrities, companies, media agencies, art galleries, and countless others are rushing to snap up parcels of land in these metaverses, and some of the numbers involved are mind-boggling. For instance, Swiss fashion house Philipp Plein hit headlines recently with the news they had bought a plot of land in Decentraland worth a massive $1.4 million. And they’re not alone: Adidas, Care Bears, Samsung, and even more buttoned-up brands like JPMorgan Chase have all opened virtual spaces on these platforms.” says Simon Hall, a Metaverse enthusiast.
Examples of companies that are organically advertising in the metaverses
Gucci was one of the first major brands to venture into the metaverse, collaborating with Roblox to produce The Gucci Gardens, a virtual, two-week immersive art exhibit.
“Inside this dreamy experience, users could wander around multiple themed rooms that paid homage to famous Gucci campaigns, throughout which they could try on and purchase digital Gucci items such as bags, clothes, and sunglasses. This time-limited campaign became a viral success after select in-game NFTs went Roblox limited (aka only available on the platform for a limited time and in limited quantities), and it ultimately helped Gucci gain some valuable early exposure for both its brand and its products before Roblox’s very young user demographics — i.e., the next generation of consumers.”, says Simon Hall.
Other companies have taken this concept of temporary activation by Gucci in the metaverse one step further by building permanent in-game spaces. Vans, for example, has built Vans World, a virtual interactive skatepark where fans can connect, participate in daily challenges, and purchase exclusive Vans merchandise.
Nike has joined the race with NIKELAND, a digital arena modeled like the company's physical headquarters that allows users to participate in various mini-games and check out new product options.
These examples show how forward-thinking businesses are addressing shifting customer behavior and providing new, relevant experiences, in a fully organic way. It feels like when early companies were building their websites on the web in the 1990s and giving people visual information about their businesses online. This time around it's about giving the people a virtual experience of the business with lots more perks.
Conclusion
Today's marketing businesses often interact with their customers through their websites and social media platforms (or, in the retail sphere, in-store). However, as we approach Web 3.0, these virtual in-game worlds may become one of the future's calling cards. Media buyers can do a lot of things with this new touchpoint in their arsenal.
The potential of advertising in the metaverses is now intriguing, as many Adtech companies are developing new innovative ways to make it even more appealing.
