Metaverse advertising: Empirical investigation of brands' metavertising practices

Today, with the advancement of technology, new developments and new channels are emerging in the field of advertising as in every field. In addition to traditional advertising media, digital advertising is also beginning to show itself, and digital advertising is gaining more importance and interest, especially thanks to the Metaverse universes. In this process, which started with the widespread use of the Internet and the acceleration of technological developments, users are starting to turn to channels where they can express themselves comfortably and share their common feelings and thoughts. In this respect, with the Metaverse universes becoming widespread, users log in to these virtual universes and interact with other users through the avatars they create unique to themselves and carry out many activities with common friend groups. With the users starting to prefer metaverse universes, institutions and brands that see this as an opportunity have started to create the idea of advertising in these virtual universes. This study aims to determine the advertising activities of brands/institutions in the Decentraland sample, which is one of the metaverse virtual universes of brands/institutions, which brands/institutions are advertising, which sectors, which countries the brands/institutions belong to. The universe of this study, in which Quantitative Research Method is used, constitutes the Decentraland virtual world. Brands/institutions engaged in advertising activities in the Decentraland universe were included in accordance with purposive sampling. The data collected by quantitative method were interpreted by quantitative content analysis technique. Based on the data obtained, we can say that brands/institutions are engaged in long-term advertising activities in the metaverse universe and that brands/institutions see the future as a new advertising medium in these new universes.