The news: Less than 24 hours after Meta announced plans to kill Horizon Worlds on VR headsets, the company reversed its decision. It will now keep the metaverse running for the “foreseeable future,” according to CTO Andrew Bosworth, per TechCrunch.

The reversal doesn’t change the underlying reality about Meta’s VR strategy—this is the same company that was so confident in the immersive future that it rebranded its entire corporate identity around the metaverse. 

• Since 2021, Meta has sunk $73 billion into its Reality Labs division, which houses all things metaverse, to build a future that marketers eventually deprioritized.
• Even if VR Horizon Worlds stays on life support, metaverse-focused brand opportunities in virtual spaces never truly materialized. 

Why it’s worth watching: 34% of global marketers considered the metaverse an important trend in 2022, but only 12% find it relevant now, per Mediaocean—indicating a steady decline in interest over the past few years.

GenAI now dominates the list at 70%, followed by connected TV (CTV) at 63% and TikTok at 43%. These are channels with measurable reach and ROI, established ad products, and daily active users in the hundreds of millions.

But this doesn’t discount the reality that many brands caught up in the initial metaverse hype have invested time and resources into developing VR strategies that are now stranded in virtual space.

• “If a brand invested mostly in platform-specific experiences that were built in Horizon Worlds, such as custom virtual spaces that only existed inside that environment, those (assets) are close to a net loss,” Paul DeMott, CTO at Helium SEO, told EMARKETER.
• “Brands that created 3D assets, interactive product models, or virtual environments as their own files are in a completely different position. Those assets are already natively accepted by AR-based platforms, such as Instagram and Snapchat,” DeMott added.

Implications for brands: Sunk costs in Meta’s VR aren’t losses if brands are able to port the assets somewhere useful. 

Roblox and Fortnite have hundreds of millions of monthly users and proven ad products. Nike and Gucci are already there—not because they believe in the metaverse, but because that’s where Gen Z’s attention is focused.

The bigger lesson from all this is a healthy skepticism toward platform-led initiatives. DeMott said that “clients that are now a lot slower to commit serious budgets to any platform that’s still in a growth or hype phase.” 

Brands seeking new opportunities will likely look beyond platform hype and focus on opportunities based on consumer usage, engagement, and tangible ROI.