Q&A: Tug’s Hannah Thompson on How Brands Can Harness Metaverse Opportunities Without Killing the Buzz
Each passing day brings us a step closer to a fully realized metaverse, along with a slew of questions from marketers wondering how best to take advantage of this incredible new connected paradigm. Hannah Thompson, Programmatic Account Manager at Tug, shares her insights on where we’re headed and what to expect.
Q: What is the Metaverse – or what will it be?
There is a near equal ratio of excitement and confusion about Web3 potential, especially the Metaverse. Most of us are familiar with where the term came from — Neal Stephenson’s infamous Snow Crash novel — and what it involves at a broad level. The best description I’ve seen is Mark Zuckerberg’s “embodied internet”, which captures the relatively simple concept of enabling people to exist in an all-encompassing online world. But despite ongoing efforts to define key characteristics, no one’s sure exactly how the Metaverse will take shape.
For now, that limits us to guessing based on known technologies and trends. And after huge advances in adoption, accessibility and sophistication, gaming is high on the list. Gamers already embracing virtual play and connection are set to be a firm Metaverse feature, and so are viewers currently joining in on Twitch. Both augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) will obviously be major elements of that, but it’s also likely they will have roles in other embodied experiences, such as shopping, socialising, stepping into content, and working. It’s not such a big leap from clocking on remotely to donning a headset and entering the Metaverse office.
