Do you want to know what’s next for the gaming industry? Join gaming executives to discuss emerging parts of the industry at GamesBeat Summit Next in October. Register today.
The rise of the metaverse will be big business for virtually any company across a wide range of industries. Bloomberg’s estimates place the potential market value at $800 billion by 2024and in October 2021, Facebook was rebranded as Meta in preparation for the brand new digital landscape.
The metaverse has been heralded by many as a brand new frontier for immersive technology that combines artificial intelligence, interactive video graphics, and both virtual and augmented reality.
However, for many companies, big data is the key technology that seems to be growing alongside the metaverse. Today, it is possible for companies to gain actionable insights about large groups of customers while browsing online, but in the age of the metaversewill greatly multiply the sheer amount of data that individuals will produce.
While many companies are waiting to see the metavers unravel, it’s definitely worth anticipating how the new era of technology can improve their processes, marketing efforts, and customer experience models.
Collaborating with AI and big data
As show dataAI can partner with big data to deliver a range of improvements through user experience models and product discovery.
We can see early evidence of big data at work in the form of digital twinthat rely on computer programming to build real-life simulations regarding product performance without the need to build expensive prototypes. This is a particularly dominant practice in the aviation world because of the costs associated with flight simulations in aerospace.
In the world of the metaverse, the amount of data individuals will produce while navigating the Web3 landscape will help digital twin simulations determine exactly how the public will respond to new services or applications: provide detailed predictions regarding engagement levels, expected pain points, and likelihood of repeat use.
“The metaverse is part of the next iteration of the Internet, which some are calling Web3, and it promises to turn everything we know on its head,” said Maxim Manturov, head of investment advisory at Freedom Finance Europe. “Over the next few years, we will likely all be working, playing, communicating and investing in this overarching ecosystem. The early days of the Internet, known as Web 1.0, were characterized by static one-way web pages. Do you remember Netscape and Yahoo? Users were nothing more than passive observers. Then came Web 2.0, the era we are in now. Controlled by a small number of companies such as Facebook and YouTube, today’s internet is highly centralized, even though users play the role of active participants. This brings us to Web3, which will open up a whole new level of experience.”
Given the all-encompassing changes that metaverse technology will likely bring all businesses with an online presence, let’s take a closer look at how big data can optimize business operations in the coming years.
Big data can transform business intelligence
as the metaverse growscompanies will be able to use cloud data to collect and analyze large amounts of data from both internal and external sources within platforms to gain rich, actionable insights into audiences and their collective interests and intentions.
Such data sources can be structured, semi-structured or entirely unstructured, with available platforms and algorithms that work to interpret the parts of information and predict future outcomes with a high degree of accuracy.
While the metaverse will be a revolutionary development for everyone, companies are learning to anticipate the new wave of big data that the new frontier will generate through virtual and expanded channels. And it’s likely there will already be more complicated algorithms by the time the metaverse reaches mainstream adoption.
In survey results, we see that big data is currently being used for a wide range of insights by organizations around the world. As individuals trade their keyboards for virtual avatars in an immersive virtual environment, we are likely to see much greater amounts of reliance on big data analytics in building predictive models and decision-making activities.
We will also see big data become more prevalent across a range of industries in the wake of the metaverse. An example of this is the commerce sector, where brands and online stores will be able to build a digital presence in new digital marketplaces where customers can interact with stores as if they were walking down a virtual shopping street.
Adopt gamification
In a metaverse store, every time they use a virtual product, customers can generate large amounts of data about their intentions and interests. This is so far that companies may be able to build a comprehensive customer profile based simply on where the interactions are coming from.
It is also possible to identify user sentiment based on how they interact with your business. As entertainment will be key in a future built on Web3, companies will likely look for gamification solutions to keep visitors longer and better understand their interests.
Data suggests that: 72% of metaverse users participated in online entertainment or gaming solutions in 2021, while 44% acquired in-game content, including skins and downloadable content. Again, companies can optimize this information to gain rich insights into how their audiences behave, what they like, what makes them navigate their way, and what is likely to occupy them longer.
Furthermore, it will be possible to use other information, such as a customer’s choice of cryptocurrency to make payments, to better understand their attitudes and values. This kind of data can also help identify emerging micro and macro trends for particular coins, decentralized financial protocols and tokenization practices to embrace.
We’ve quickly seen Facebook transform itself into Meta in preparation for the metaverse. It is certain that the renewed Meta has already taken advantage of Facebook’s huge stocks of big data to determine how best to tackle the task of building into the new frontier.
In this regard, Meta is already a master when it comes to handling large amounts of big data, and companies can benefit from observing the social media giant’s early steps into the world of the metaverse.
Along with user identities, metadata surrounding Facebook’s marketing capabilities will be turned into metadata to make Meta a leading marketing portal as the early metaverse begins to take shape. Such data can be used to great effect in delivering extremely powerful, targeted campaigns for businesses in the future.
Despite Meta’s early dominance in big data, Sandbox could also be used to provide actionable data around its early popularity. Sandbox has more than 500,000 users, many of whom have their own assets and games in the world. If a company wants to handle the massive amount of data available on such a platform, its marketing campaigns can reach its intended audience with: unprecedented accuracy.
For now, the metaverse is still in its infancy. While many companies are waiting longer to see how the dust will settle on this new frontier, it can be helpful to get the feelers out to see how big data can affect the business of tomorrow.
The next generation of the Internet offers another opportunity to outsmart competitors. By acting sooner and faster, the companies now embracing the metaverse are likely to win over their target audience with much greater efficiency in this brave new world.
Dmytro Spilka is the chief wizard at Solvid.
The GamesBeat credo when talking about the game industry, is ‘where passion and business meet’. What does this mean? We want to tell you how important news is to you — not just as a decision maker in a game studio, but also as a game fan. Whether you’re reading our articles, listening to our podcasts, or watching our videos, GamesBeat helps you learn and have fun with the industry. Learn more about membership.