TY - JOUR
T1 - What drives advertisers toward or away from immersive virtual spaces?
T2 - The Metaverse Conundrum: Affordances and “Disaffordances” Through the Eyes of Advertisers
AU - Marder, Ben
AU - Yau, Amy
AU - Yule, Jennifer A.
AU - Osadchaya, Elena
AU - Angell, Robert
AU - Zhang, Will Zhiyuan
AU - Oliver, Sebastian
AU - Lavertu, Laura
AU - Stylos, Nikolaos
AU - Qi, Kang
AU - Gao, Liyu
AU - AlRabiah, Sara
AU - Regt, Anouk de
AU - Zhang, Yiwei
AU - Li, Jiayuan
PY - 2024/9/1
Y1 - 2024/9/1
N2 - The metaverse is hyped as revolutionizing advertising, but practitioners remain cautious. Knowledge of “why” advertisers are or are not adopting the metaverse is limited, because they have not been asked. Through 48 interviews with advertising executives, this research elucidates a complex ecosystem with four affordances (novel advertising space, immersive experiences, specific audience targeting, and communicating brand innovativeness) and four disaffordances (limited reach, anticipated lack of return on investment, lack of requisite technical expertise, and poor interoperability) that underpin adoption. These are shaped by consumers’ and decision makers’ (dis)affordances, as well as by contextual factors such as industry norms. The authors offer an advertising-context-specific definition of the metaverse and questions to guide practitioners’ adoption.
AB - The metaverse is hyped as revolutionizing advertising, but practitioners remain cautious. Knowledge of “why” advertisers are or are not adopting the metaverse is limited, because they have not been asked. Through 48 interviews with advertising executives, this research elucidates a complex ecosystem with four affordances (novel advertising space, immersive experiences, specific audience targeting, and communicating brand innovativeness) and four disaffordances (limited reach, anticipated lack of return on investment, lack of requisite technical expertise, and poor interoperability) that underpin adoption. These are shaped by consumers’ and decision makers’ (dis)affordances, as well as by contextual factors such as industry norms. The authors offer an advertising-context-specific definition of the metaverse and questions to guide practitioners’ adoption.
KW - metaverse
KW - immersive environments
KW - advertising
KW - definition
KW - strategy
KW - affordances
UR - https://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/
U2 - 10.2501/JAR-2024-020
DO - 10.2501/JAR-2024-020
M3 - Article
VL - 64
SP - 255
EP - 283
JO - Journal of Advertising Research
JF - Journal of Advertising Research
IS - 3
ER -