Betting Big on the Metaverse: Are You Ready?

talking about those opportunities big opportunity the metaverse betting big on the metaverse are you ready with the title like that how can we not listen in to this great talk and i want to welcome our speaker she's natalia uh vasilvaya basalavaya i will try that but i do know natalia that part of it vp marketing at anzu an in-game advertising platform that brings real-world brand ads to video games and esports and who better of course than the world's most advanced in-game advertising solution to talk about the world's coolest new focus and trend the immersive next generation version of the internet that we call the metaverse so i'm over to you natalia to

share your thoughts and share your vision thank you so much pagan thanks i'm great to be here let me get started with a screen share and we'll start hi everyone and welcome to our matters discussion um i'm natalia vasileva with the marketing at anzu the world's most advanced in-game advertising platform at anzu we have come up with a cardinal technology that enables game studios to monetize their titles uh by bringing non-intrusive hundred percent gamer friendly fully blended ads that become part of their gameplay and just contribute to the game realism and uh just think of the real world ads like the billboards in the street or a

video ad in a mall or in a square a logo on a t-shirt a logo in a car all of these and much more is now available programmatically dynamically as video and display formats across mobile pc console and even roblox aranzu our mission our vision and mission has always been to make advocates in games better for the entire industry better for advertisers by bringing them in front of the hard to reach gaming audiences for game developers by enabling them to set up a sustainable revenue stream that respects their precious gamers and for game gamers themselves by letting them play and not disrupting their in gaming experiences and i'm very happy that our mission and vision is fully aligned with the upcoming metaverse and we as the company as the industry player

can contribute to the upcoming um matters so let's get started um i would i would like to like to have the key takeaway it's part of our discussion and how you can be part of the matter verse of any like a game john any uh game size and any platform not looking just outside at the matterhorse but diving in and making it happen and just a spoiler it's possible in 90 percent 99 cases and i will show you how so the matterhorse and the web 3d the wax 3d has become a real buzzword but it has a like big mini behind it and we are switching from um the flat the

web 2d to fully 3d three-dimensional objects to you know super three-dimensional uh digital worlds that it's intelligent that it's technological and it's just the next frontier of social connection um it's the place where we spend a lot of our time and we hang out with er with brands and obviously gaming is an initial point of it um it's much more visual and we can do much more it's it holds literally um limitless creative potential so i really want you to to become friends with not only web uh 2.0 but also web 3.0 and metaverse is obviously part of it um gaming has become super social and um the matter the the pandemic just you

know contributed a lot to that and that's one of the um like a few things we can be grateful to the matter or to the pandemic it just recognized the social potential of gaming and now we don't come just to compete you know or play on our own no we come to games to meet with friends and now to do much more than just play and gaming um have become the place you know the new whatsapp and the new cool places to celebrate birthday to celebrate graduation parties even funerals and much more and there are even more reasons to stay in the matter verse because for me gaming is just a big part of it um and you know the initial point the starting point of the matter is but the the matterers itself is a much bigger uh phenomenon so there are more reasons to stay in the matter verse since it's our digital life and i would like to draw attention to

the digital activities inside your games that you know you can make work and allow players not only to play but do shopping host events uh at music then you know even even run fashion shows dating learning and much more all of these elements and you know we are not limited to them only are now available and you as game creators can make it possible inside your experiences inside your games small or big it doesn't matter we can make it happen and you know the matter first is a truly cultural and economic shift that we need to take into consideration and we can't ignore and this just explained why it's you know the the cultural economic not only just the digital ship that we are experiencing these days

well the matter verse it's super social it's limitless and already mentioned that it holds it holds limitless creative potential on top of it user defined and that's the core of the matter verse our gamers our users are ready to take the central role in the metaphors and become creators that's why we welcome so um much user generated content these days and they are ready users want to create their worlds they want to create their own rules they want to create their own apps and let them give this chance to do that because awesome things can happen when we do things together let's just build the playground for that and make it happen to make this world this digital world user defined and every day it's super super consistent and we spent a much more time in digital worlds now and i'm talking about gaming worlds not just social media than we do in our

physical ones and obviously it has been promoted by the pandemic and our limited abilities to communicate pandemic just accelerated the acceptance of the materials i don't see that it will not happen without the pandemic but it just you know it has been accelerated the centralized and that's the beauty of it because there are no walled gardens we have um a lot of worlds and we can jump from a world to a world and you know carry on our things and just make it happen and do whatever we want across worlds without walled gardens and that's another awesome thing about the matavours creative interoperable and yeah that's super connected with the decentralized words worlds let's build the technologies that are um interconnected and can be brought from a world to a world from a platform to a platform we we need to think broader now cooperate in order to make it happen

uh sorry um yes and then uh we have persistent and um and that's kind of it let's make this world happen all together in a super social limitless usually defined in decentralized well way that will create the matter verse the way we want it and these are just a few more vehicles into the matter verse that are not connected to gaming that but also like possible these days uh mixed reality augmented reality virtual reality facebook moves and into the matter verse and the matter creation and microsoft smash horizons virtual meeting rooms all of this is now possible and let's just you know build it the way we want and that's the window the small window we have now with the emerging technology and we can shape it the way we want block by block we can

shape and create it the way the industry wants so i want you to be the creators and i want you to think that you can [Music] make it happen and you know you can make it work and that's why i see gaming as a highway into the matter versus else i already mentioned that you know the starting point of the matter is because games have become social hubs um especially um in the colby days and that's why you know it's a highway that is paving the way to the matterhorse and i will show you some of the massive examples uh electric daisy carnival and roblox that's the event that's the first music festival on roblox it's not just the concert that's the festival and it's the first of its kind that took place in roblox this october and that's just you know the evolution in the relationships between music and gaming and mother verses and you know that's how music makes it happen but that's available that's where we are the

festival music festivals um in the 3d world find your things star court small on roblox and that's the stranger things is the series by netflix and they just decided to bring the star core mall from their series so that um their fans can experience them all can be closer to the series they want to extend the experience and again as a brand they want to be where their audiences are which is super smart coca-cola party in the central land that's another huge um like massive activation by coca-cola the first of its kind because they created nfts just for this event um and they um like created a few events to support their coca-cola party and then you know saw the entities obviously but again they coca-cola is where their audiences are and they make fun together and they are much closer to us users and

you see feels that people there people avatars there enjoy the uh the party and that's the most important thing we can do part we can hold parties in offline and online worlds and that's amazing gucci garden on roblox um another non-endemic activation i would say and then uh the beauty of it is that gucci's back was sold 80 um for 800 bucks more than in real world why because users and gamers like the matter was dwellers let's put it this way they value the digital world even more than the physical one because they spent more time there and we need to remember about it and the most recent chipotles experience which is the first activation of them of this kind and they just you know came to roblox to celebrate halloween it's

cool again it's super super coconut and it just makes them much closer to their users and the audience and i brought you a number of um high level and massive activations but it doesn't mean that you can't do something similar you can on a smaller or bigger level and you can store it smaller but you know the thing that that's we can make it happen and it's available for any game developer who's looking into the matter and i really encourage you to start thinking um of your games and the next alterations that would be suitable for the matter verse another cool thing and another shift that has taken place is the play trend and the matter rose game is totally frequently and more it's cross platform now free to play we're connected with low quality and only mobile games and i'm very happy that this revolution is

taking place and more and more uh top crossing uh piecing console game developers and publishers have started to recognize the model and you know just utilize it and they debunk the myth that free to play means low quality no with all the activations that we just saw and much more with in-game additives and another monetization model so we can make it work and lo and free-to-play is super beneficial for both gamers and game developers talking about the free to play future we see that in 2020 78 of total digital revenue was brought by free to play and what is more important there was a nine percent increase and as you can see um in the chart well obviously mobile is still leading frequently but we see more and more adoption on the pc and console side and this trend is 100 connected um with the next one with the cross platform play because for now we are not talking about

only pc only mobile or only console no we talk about cross-platform and in this cross-platform free to play and in the matter verse free-to-play can uh coexist and you know can be super successful and these are just a few leading free-to-play game titles that are available on all platforms now and i'm sure that you know them i just wanted to highlight that yes it's possible now it's not low quality it's not only for mobile you can do that cross platform trans so just to support um my claim like more than 85 percent of internet users play across devices and let's not forget about it whenever you think of the platform you want to develop your next game with go cross platform and modern 100 top grossing titles have cross flat and play enabled and you know these are all the titles that you could see on the previous slide again we're just that's another revolution and i'm super happy that it has been uh finally

it's finally here and you know uh we can give more value to our users without asking them for 70 dollars in advance i'm talking about um cross-platform and free-to-play obviously we need to think of the new monetization strategies and ways to to thrive and you know to make it um like successful for for your um games and you know for you as the game developer and here obviously we have loot boxes we have custom brand activations and i showed you a number of them and we have we have in-app purchases well you know some of these um models do have limitations um like some of them are for name campaigns like custom brand activations really take a lot of time and effort and will not uh suit every game developer loot boxes have also a

number of challenges and i purchased it it's something that you know we've been having for for a while in the industry and um they've made their way uh they're let's put it this way on top of it and again all of these are available and you can mix them you can uh just make it work for your title um i swear it was talking about anzu and i just want to to draw your attention to in-game advertising as the turnkey solution that works at scale and at speed across platforms across devices and can can be the right start and the first move into the matters and i told you that i'm super proud that this concept is fully aligned with the upcoming um shift with the matter verse and that's how you can get started the best thing about it is that this can be a hybrid model that's you know you can make work with with any um with any other model like custom

integrations or loot boxes it brings the sustainable revenue um stream that really respects the gamer and i encourage you just to think about it whenever you think of your next title or alteration and just to sum it up the matter verse is coming and my question has been at the beginning and i hope that i made a contribution to you know to your strategy or just um made you think of whether you are ready for that and how you can contribute to that as i mentioned the window is small and with the emerging technology we have the luxury of contributing to it and make it work so i really encourage you to be active to dive in not to look from the outside to start learning about the culture of the matters and its dwellers

their behaviors and make it work for your specific title uh for your studio or tweak your strategy accordingly thank you for your attention i would be happy to stay in touch and i would love to hear your questions and i will not disappoint you in that natalia in fact you're probably going to have to stick around in discord or something and take a few more um quick easy one if everyone is joining into the metaverse how do you stand out so what would you recommend it's a big party out there we saw it with uh with decentraland um what would you recommend to publishers who say okay i want to really make an impression i'm a marketer that operates in the gaming industry and as a marketer my first um and you know top advice would be to stay true to your core values that's the

first thing you know it's like how to make it work for yourself just say yourself be yourself sorry be yourself all the roles have been taken right the same is here i would really recommend to stick to your core dna and that's the best that you can do because the one who knows your audience you know what works and what doesn't work for your audience talk to talk to your gamers i know that gamers really love um when we start talking to them and i'm you know as the around zoo we do that from time to time and i encourage you you're much closer to your audience to the gamers that we are for example talk to them ask them start testing but again don't go against your core values even if it's on trends okay um so real quick question easy one are anzu working in xr platforms for advertising integration um um that's a good question we um started as

a vr and ar company so technologically we can support this um like technologies and we did have a number of vr uh publishers and we tested ar on our site so we can make it work and you know with the current trends i hope that's and i think that will come back to that okay we've got more than eight questions so i'm not gonna go through all of them i will pick out a couple more just real quick um you said you see cross-platform as the future gateway to the metaverse should developers be developing for multi-platform totally and yes um you know like first we'll go for it and uh i explained why and you know a good point here is that the matter verse is decentralized and we like we hope that the industry will consolidate and that's another you know i also encourage you to uh to be

open to this consolidation because we can make it work together as the industry and then you know we can in the future we can develop technologies and platforms that will be um compatible with each other and it will help both us and the gamers okay speaking of gamers a couple questions about this not maybe a long answer from you because we do have to go to our next speaker but i said stick around and hang out in there in our own little universe right uh to take some questions maybe uh measures to protect kids from being lost deep inside the metaverse what are some measures or what can what is it that we can do to create these experiences but you know not but not overdo it i guess is the question yeah that's a great question and that's um i think that's one of the concerns for us as the industry and for us as parents because you know uh when we're out of work most of our kids hang out in roblox

minecraft and that's an issue not only for us as uh the gaming industry and that's that's a big one um well you know platforms like roblox for example are taking care of it and they are totally copper compliant they really as we i i'm telling you about this firsthand because we are operating across roblox and we literally have to validate each creative before it goes live and i really love it because they know that you know there are a lot of john alpha hanging out there and they're super sensitive to some uh things so the good signal is that platforms have started to treat it much more seriously and as the industry i think that the best advice would be just to to develop experiences to develop platforms or games having kids in mind if it's good for our kids it will be good for adults and that's what we need to think about because um you know digital natives

are here and they're like they're in the digital world most of their time that's why we need to make it safe for our future generations okay and using yourself as as the best sort of uh reality check that's that's great advice as well natalia i have to let you go um obviously you got us very excited you said it's all about the metaverse and got very got us very excited very inspired because uh questions are still coming in a lot a lot to come and i'm sure this is just the beginning of talks like this um so thank you for sharing thank you for sharing what anzu is doing and some also some cool videos to uh to watch and bring it all together now we know the possibilities and they are indeed exciting and endless thanks again and have a good rest your day thank you for having me bye-bye