Main Highlights:
- Virtual Product Placements
- Virtual Spokespeople (VSPs)
- Custom Crafted VSPs
The metaverse is a large-scale social trend away from seeing flat media in the third person and toward experiencing it in the first person. Despite reducing the notion to its essential elements, the consequences remain significant. Because of the metaverse, the user’s function will be drastically altered.
The move to immersive media will have an impact on almost every business, but marketing will be the most impactful. Flat graphics serve as the foundation for digital advertising tools, approaches, and tactics. The primary marketing strategies will shift to more participatory metaverse experiences.
Digital media was once seen in the third person, but it is now more akin to a first-person experience.
Immersive Marketing has the potential to be more effective than standard marketing strategies. Predatory techniques can be utilised to exploit immersive approaches. Virtual Product Placements and Virtual People are the two primary tactics that are predicted to dominate marketing in the metaverse.
On October 4, thought leaders will provide insight on how metaverse technology will alter the way all industries interact and conduct business in San Francisco.
Virtual Product Placements (VPPs)
Advertisements will be employed in the metaverse as promotional objects and activities that are introduced into paid-for surroundings. Specific persons will experience the VPPs at specific periods. If you are a sports fan of a specific age and economic level, you may see someone walking down the street wearing a shirt advertising a high-end sports club two blocks away.
Because it is a VPP, people surrounding you will not see the same advertising information. Users in your vicinity will see various advertising items according to their profiles. VPPs are as follows defined.
A virtual product placement is a computer-generated representation of a product, service, or activity that is injected into a virtual or augmented reality on behalf of a paying sponsor.
The promotional information will be interwoven into the consumer’s daily life. If VPPs are not controlled, advertisers have the ability to exploit them. Virtual Product Placements may be mistaken for actual experiences encountered by a user in a virtual environment. If users are unable to distinguish between genuine experiences and targeted promotional content, advertising in the metaverse may become predatory, tricking users into believing that specific products, services, or activities are popular in their community when they are actually viewing a promotionally altered representation of their surroundings.
Virtual Spokespeople (VSPs)
Promotional content in the metaverse will comprise more than just products and silent characters; it will also contain artificial intelligence-driven characters who engage users in promotional discourse for paying sponsors. Because of recent advances in the field of Large Language Models and Realms, VSPs are expected to be used on metaverse platforms in the near future.
A virtual spokesperson is a fictitious figure who is placed in a virtual or augmented reality to interact with users.
Users will most likely be targeted through passive observation or direct involvement. In the metaverse, two virtual persons are discussing a product, service, or concept. A virtual pair might be put near a potential customer.
The target may be unaware that a third party has introduced virtual individuals into the environment for advertising purposes.
The targeted user may overhear the pair discussing their new automobile. The user may believe that the remarks are genuine and not advertising. Similar strategies might be utilised to convey a product or service’s promotional message. Because metaverse platforms gather complete profile data about each user, an overheard discussion might simply be tailored to elicit extremely precise emotions, sentiments, interests, or dissatisfaction among targeted individuals.
Persuasive (but not undercover) VSPs
Consumers must be shielded from predatory methods. Regulators should think about requiring promotional VSPs to be distinct from genuine users. Overheard discussions that are targeted ads with real views of their surroundings will not deceive consumers.
VSPs will be most compelling when they interact directly with customers. The user may be unaware that they are conversing with an artificial intelligence-driven dialogue with a strategy. Conversations with artificial intelligence agents may now be authenticated thanks to recent improvements in LLMs.
The artificial intelligence-driven chat bots are anticipated to have access to detailed profile data collected by metaverse platforms about each targeted user, including their preferences, interests, and a historical record of past promotional encounters. These bots will have access to real-time emotional data from targeted users’ facial expressions, vocal inflections, and vital signs. The agent will be able to change its strategy in real time.
Custom Crafted VSPs
These virtual ambassadors will be presented in a unique visual format. Gender, hair colour, eye colour, dress style, voice, and mannerisms of VSPs are expected to be custom created by artificial intelligence, which forecasts which sets of traits would most successfully impact the intended user.
This was represented in my novel fourteen years ago. An artificial intelligence system that assessed the strategy to be an increasingly powerful kind of influence made the characters in the graphic book appear more and more sexualized. This was written as sarcastic fiction more than a decade ago, but now it is on the verge of becoming reality.
Predatory advertising has a high potential for abuse and should be regulated. Regulators might consider regulating virtual spokesmen to be aesthetically distinguishable from actual individuals in order to warn customers that the chat is targeted advertising material rather than an authentic interaction. Manipulation should be controlled.
Regulation: Imperative
According to new study, artificial intelligence-generated personalities can deceive customers. When GANs are used to build virtual persons, they are indistinguishable from real humans. Users believe that virtual persons are more trustworthy than actual people. Advertisers will choose artificial intelligence-driven virtual spokesmen in the not-too-distant future.
The metaverse is on its way and will have an impact on society at all levels. Artificial intelligence will be employed in marketing methods to maximise persuasion. VPPs and VSPs should be aesthetically different from real-world items, services, and people.
