Nonetheless, about six in 10 Americans plan to take at least one summer trip, and tourists are spending roughly 34% more than they did in 2019 at restaurants and concerts.

Travel and entertainment also contributed to this growth, with cruise lines, concerts/theater, and amusement parks seeing triple-digit increases. Whether consumers will keep splurging on in-person experiences—or pull back as they have on retail—remains to be seen. With gas prices approaching or exceeding $5 per gallon in every state, travel and entertainment may be next on the chopping block.

It’s not clear yet, but presumably, all the live concerts, storefronts, and gaming worlds of a metaverse have to sit somewhere on the platform. Brands seeing success in this space might consider investing in a more permanent address in the metaverse.

This week, the company folded its Horizon Venues app, which lets users access VR basketball games, concerts, and 3D experiences, into Horizon Worlds, which should give Worlds greater utility. VR headset Quest 2 has sold nearly 15 million units, per IDC estimates, with one IDC analyst calling it “the most successful VR headset to date.”

Events within games also have a lot of draw: A November 2020 Lil Nas X concert series in Roblox was viewed more than 33 million times, for example.

The big takeaway: From licensed games dating back to the ‘80s to Fortnite’s lavish in-game concerts, advertising has been part of the gaming experience since the medium’s birth. But ads still aren’t baked into the medium the way they are for TV, and advertisers should be mindful of players’ wishes for a non-disruptive experience.

One in five said they could imagine using the virtual space as social media, while other popular options included attending concerts/live entertainment events (19%) and using online streaming services (19%). 50% of Gen Z shoppers ages 18 to 24 in France expressed interest in shopping in the metaverse, compared with 27% of the wider population, per YouGov.

While sports media and broadcasting fall into the media category, advertising for live sports events qualifies as entertainment since many of the same venues are used for both concerts and games.

eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman discusses the current wave of retail store closures, the seismic shift to online shopping and what retailers should be thinking about during this time. He then talks about why payments firm Square is opening a bank, how you can help your local restaurants and where to watch live streamed music concerts from home.

Its music arm, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), invested in virtual concert operator Wave in 2020. TME hosted a virtual concert dubbed TMELAND at the end of December 2021. ByteDance. ByteDance invested in Roblox’s Chinese competitor Reworld in April 2021 and acquired VR headset maker Pico in August of that year. Its investment arm invested in VR/AR company Mengtu Keji (梦途科技).

Various components make up an AR/VR ecosystem, and they need to work in concert to enable a seamless suspension of disbelief that one is immersed in another world.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, also held a post-game virtual concert featuring The Foo Fighters that was underwhelming and riddled with issues. These issues prompted comparisons to 2000’s “Dot-Com Bowl.”.

Meta’s ad framed the metaverse as a place where characters and iconography from childhood can find a second life, yet it hosted a virtual concert with the Foo Fighters that ultimately failed to stick its landing.

Live Nation’s Lawn Pass, Alaska Airlines’ Flight Pass, and the reported revival of MoviePass are providing bundled access to concerts, travel, and movie theaters. These could pose a threat to at-home entertainment subscriptions that thrived during the earlier stages of the pandemic. Maturing DNVBs Will Incur Greater Costs to Sustain Long-Term Growth.

New features like gifting, crypto payments, and Lightning Network interoperability will continue driving engagement in concert.

Sports, Concerts, and Live Events. Live events, including sports and esports, concerts, festivals, and conferences, present perpetual challenges for broadcasters. Not only do the most-watched ones, such as the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, and Tour de France, put stress on networks, but they often have poor in-venue service for fans who attend them live.

Following the success of Fortnite’s live in-game concert series, the game introduced a permanent Party World mode in December 2021 that lets users hang out and chat instead of battle. Meta’s VR game Horizon Worlds, which launched in December 2021, is also modeled after Roblox’s sandbox style, where anyone can build their own self-contained worlds within the game.

Events within games also have a lot of draw: A November 2020 Lil Nas X concert series in Roblox was viewed more than 33 million times, for example. Extended reality (XR), like AR and VR, gives brands a chance to explore the technological aspect of the metaverse at various levels.

In April 2020, rapper Travis Scott performed a virtual concert within the video game “Fortnite,” where 12.3 million concurrent players attended the first performance. Several months later, in November 2020, rapper Lil Nas X performed a series of similar virtual concerts within the gaming platform “Roblox.”