With more and more business and sales being conducted in virtual worlds, one digital marketing agency with physical offices in California is expanding its services into the metaverse.
The LookinMeta Launch
LookinLA is already a digital-first marketing agency. With partners like Google, Salesforce, and Shopify, high-tech trends like big data analytics and online retail are not new to the company. So, what’s new? In a way, everything.
“We are the forefront of metaverse marketing,” LookinLA CEO Ali Payani said in a release shared with ARPost. “Our clients are now able to expand their businesses and operations into the virtual world to amplify their growth and authority.”
The March 3 release announced a new platform from LookinLA called LookinMeta. This platform will give clients and client companies access to a whole suite of emerging technology tools and services.
What Marketing Looks Like in the Metaverse
A lot of the release has to do with things that some readers may still be skeptical of, and with some good reason. Specifically, the buying and selling of virtual goods and property.
“LookinMETA’s expertise will help clients buy and sell virtual lands and real estate across the metaverses,” Payani said in the release. “We design, list, and sell business NFTs and develop a virtual marketing strategy.”
Even among emerging technologies, some of these concepts are relatively new and more-or-less untested. However, recent months have seen a growing number of influential brands, agencies, and even governments buying land in virtual worlds. Further, there is a growing body of market research regarding the changing markets around NFTs.
How the Move Extends Reality
Virtual worlds and NFTs aren’t inherently extended reality topics. Some of the biggest virtual worlds by user-base aren’t accessible via extended reality means like VR and AR.
However, NFTs, in particular, are increasingly finding a home in XR-accessible virtual worlds. Virtual worlds and development projects that work with certain blockchains allow users to bring virtual goods minted as NFTs from one virtual world to another.
For example, Ready Player Me is compatible with the MetaMask Ethereum wallet and recently partnered with 8th Wall. MetaMask is also compatible with Spatial, an XR platform that recently pivoted from enterprise “to become the metaverse for cultural events such as NFT exhibitions.”
LookinLA’s release also explicitly mentioned advertising at events like virtual reality concerts and games. It also mentioned ads in augmented reality. While the company’s reference to its potential tools and services in augmented reality applications was more in passing, it has been largely speculated that the development of the AR layer of the metaverse will likely be ad-based.
Markets Are Moving
We have seen a growing number of established companies moving into virtual worlds and XR applications but these movements have largely been self-driven. The advent of a marketing initiative targeted directly at growth within the metaverse is definitely something to keep an eye on for its own merit as well as being a signal of larger market maturity within XR.
