As more and more companies and organizations get in on the metaverse and explore how to expand their brands into the virtual world, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company has released a new report, titled “Value creation in the metaverse,” that looks at the potential value of the metaverse and what businesses can do now to best position themselves for this virtual future.
The study consisted of a survey of over 3,400 consumers and 450 global senior leaders. McKinsey’s report attempts to make sense of the emerging metaverse and breaks it down into four main groups: enablers, infrastructure and hardware, platforms, and content and experiences. Each of these groups is further broken down into a total of 10 “layers.”
When it comes to the value generated by the metaverse, the report notes that in 2021, total investment in the metaverse reached $57 billion. So far in 2022, over $120 billion has been invested in the metaverse space, a number that could reach a staggering $5 trillion by 2030.
This clearly represents enormous value for brands and organizations, and even though confidence in cryptocurrency and NFTs has fallen in recent weeks, the metaverse and web3 are not going anywhere.
McKinsey found that 59 percent of consumers prefer at least one activity when done in the virtual world compared to its physical alternative. The top reasons for these preferences were connectivity with people and ability to explore virtual worlds, and the top activities that people preferred virtually were shopping, attending virtual events or games, fitness, dating, and education.
Additionally, about 79 percent of people currently active in the metaverse have made some type of purchase, ranging from in-game purchases to enhance gaming experience to real-world items to NFTs. Companies and brands that aren’t looking to capitalize on this amount of ecommerce will lose out big time.
Executives consider crypto, AI, and AR/VR to be the top metaverse technologies, all of which are experiencing immense innovation and growth right now. Companies surveyed shared that the top enterprise use cases for the metaverse that they are implementing are marketing campaigns or initiatives, learning and development for employees, virtual meetings, events or conference, and product design or digital twinning.
Priorities and initiatives will certainly vary by industry, but the metaverse offers such a diverse range of possibilities and it will offer incredible benefits as it continues to develop. It’s essential that organizations of all kinds get started now to create a strategy and get involved in the metaverse.