The Key Questions Marketers Have About Staying Safe in the Metaverse

As more brands enter the metaverse—a loosely defined term for immersive, virtual platforms—marketers are serious about exploring revenue opportunities, but critical to growth is keeping people, and their data, safe. While brands figure out how they should show up in the next evolution of the internet, questions around privacy policies, data regulation and content adjacency are popping up. "Brands can grow in the metaverse and simultaneously develop their privacy measures," said Emily Safian-Demers, editor at Wunderman Thompson Intelligence. And the opportunity is lucrative. A recent report by Forrester forecasts agencies will double their investments in their metaverse capabilities in 2023. Bloomberg predicts the metaverse market will be worth nearly $800 billion by 2024, up from from $500 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, the evolving digital privacy attitudes have led to conversations around consumer safety, brand identity and interoperability, six industry experts told Adweek. Meta Continues Slide in Q3 2022 Amid Calls for Cuts in Headcount, Metaverse Investments How to avoid data breaches The immersive experiences and interconnectivity in metaverse platforms rely on the collection of personal data on a scale that goes beyond current online capabilities. Currently, a person’s geolocation (if they are using a VR headset that is connected to GPS), sensor data like eye tracking, a person's environment, as well as their physical and mental conditions, are already collected to make the experience more immersive. How to avoid data breaches is something marketers ask before embarking on their metaverse journey, according to Keith Soljacich, head of innovation at Publicis Media. These are “unresolved questions,” he said. Specifically, marketers are concerned about what constitutes personally identifiable information (PII) in the metaverse. In our current online world, PII constitutes usernames, passwords and internet history. But the intricacies of the metaverse, and the amount of data collected, make this hard to define. Marketers also query the scope of anonymous data collected. Centralized metaverse platform owners, such as Meta's Horizon Worlds, know who creates an account and the avatar it is linked to. While avatars are pseudonymous, there are concerns they can leak information about the user's real-world identity through behavioral or knowledge-based clues, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals. The potential for data breaches in decentralized platforms, where people have more control over their data, is less of a concern, says Mathieu Nouzareth, U.S. CEO of decentralized gaming platform The Sandbox. “We leave it upon the brands to directly deal with consumers if they wish to do so,” Nouzareth said. For example, a brand can create a chat box to communicate with the user to collect their information, such as name and address. Making brand activations interoperable across platforms Despite concerns from European regulators, antitrust isn’t something that has come up in conversations with clients at Publicis Media, Soljacich said. But brands will want interoperability between metaverse worlds. As of today, they need to build separately on platforms like Horizon, Decentraland and The Sandbox, which limits user experience. True interoperability is not simple, it requires investing time and money, as well as deep collaboration among platforms. The Sandbox made a major step towards interoperability with its current Alpha Season 3. With 140,000 avatars available from projects, such as Steve Aoki, Gutter Cat Gang and Bored Ape Yacht Club, people can use these avatars to explore different projects across The Sandbox. This allows creative ways for brands to give fans another way to engage with the IP, the company told Adweek. "It doesn’t make sense to have a single company gatekeeping the metaverse,” Nouzareth said, adding that it's "not a zero-sum game." If the Metaverse Seemingly Resembles a Ghost Town Why Are Brands Still Investing? Brands are trademarking to keep safe As a result of concerns around brand safety, suitability and adjacency, many companies are filing to trademark their name in the metaverse. Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney, took to Twitter to announce several trademark applications for virtual goods in the metaverse, including American Express and Arby’s. CVS too has filed to trademark its health clinics in the metaverse. “We’re seeing an uptick in brands beginning to trademark their logo, services, and names in the metaverse,” said Demers. “This is to safeguard their brand identity in this new virtual space.”