“Once upon a time, there was the web”, this is how we could start telling our children one day about how society, communication, and marketing have changed thanks to the development of technologies and key figures who have dictated this change over the years.
From the first digital era (web1) based on a passive user interaction, through the early 2000s of user-generated content and communities (web2), to what we are experiencing today with web3: the token economy, with user-created content that is also their property.
When presenting projects to clients, the easiest way to explain the importance of these generational transitions is to give examples that look to the past: from the first e-commerce, experiments without precise regulation, to peer-to-peer Napster-style applications, borderline illegal applications where downloading music and movies was widespread.
Today, however, we feel much safer, buying on Amazon, with return policies, terms and conditions, tracking systems, or listening to music on Spotify or watching movies on Netflix.
Hence the paraphrase of a classic cinematic phrase, “Once upon a time, there was the web.”
Yes, because the web has changed and will continue to change, and this is the substantial reason why, beyond developing marketing projects for companies, the focus of industry professionals on web3 is to aim for marketing training courses.
The companies I meet have just learned to use web2 to the fullest and already find themselves facing a new challenge, intuiting a passage that will be inevitable and finding solutions that can allow them to outdo their competition in their merchandise category.
For companies, for marketing, the “twist” came during the second half of 2021 when Mark Zuckerberg announced the name change of his company from Facebook to Meta. A fundamental choice that is reminiscent of Steve Jobs when he chose to change the name from AppleComputers to Apple, realizing new trends to ride beyond the individual computer.
If we stop an ordinary person on the street today and ask them the fateful question “who invented the metaverse?” they will probably answer, “Zuckerberg.” A marketing move that was in some ways brilliant, anticipating the times, but also gave global awareness and strongly encouraged every company in every sector to ask themselves what was happening and then to delve deeper.
Yes, because companies, both small businesses, and especially large multinationals, have been allocating a good part of their marketing budget to their communication plans on Facebook for years. Some of these companies discovered the new web3 trend just by receiving the new invoices, where Facebook had default-reported the new name “Meta.”
It was, therefore, a completely natural step to wonder what was happening.
Since then, barely a year has passed, but during this period, albeit short, there has been an explosion of activity by many brands, particularly in fashion but also in automotive, food, real estate, retail, and many other sectors, creating a real escalation, not to be defined as a “bubble” as it often is.
The directions taken were essentially three: the metaverse, NFTs, and blockchain. Concepts that we will explain individually but that often combine with each other:
the metaverse, to build more or less immersive spaces and experiences on the most disparate existing platforms;
NFTs, mainly in marketing terms, offering bonuses and exclusive content by including them in already planned advertising campaigns;
blockchain, for tracking and notarization of production supply chains.
Although the latter had a more interesting use in terms of technology, marketing has clearly been activated to then convey the communication and positioning of the brand within this new trend.
I will not mention the names of companies so as not to interfere and influence the success of one brand’s activity over another. This analysis aims to examine the Italian marketing scenario in web3 and it is appropriate that it remains at this level. However, it is evident to all industry operators and in some ways also to end consumers, the confusion created from late 2021 to today, with a myriad of activities that have sometimes worked well, but other times poorly or not at all.
This is natural, as mentioned, it has already happened in web1 and web2: only by proceeding through “test and learn” attempts can we understand the right direction to take and overcome the pioneering phase of web3.
Since Facebook’s epochal transition to Meta, everything has been incredibly fast, even too fast. Advertising agencies, receiving input from their clients, have suddenly become experts in web3 in one day and tried to respond to requests and build projects. Many clients have repeated more than one activity in a year just to find that positioning against the competition, make themselves newsworthy, and say “I arrived first.”
In 2011 when I started my experience as an advertiser in digital advertising, one of the things I remember most clearly was the mode of online advertising planning, mostly conveyed through banners repeated several times on the same page to achieve the required views, even if the user (and potential consumer) viewing it was always the same. Since then, there have been entries of major industry players, mostly technological, which have allowed the correct tracking of advertising views, reaching the right target, protecting privacy and ensuring “brand safety.”
Today, digital advertising has become much safer, complete, and integrated with offline planning (TV, print, radio, etc.), and for this reason, digital increases its market share year by year until it represents the first media today, the only one with continuous developments and measurability from the beginning to the end of the funnel.
Web3, with blockchain technology that has given life to trends such as metaverses and NFTs, can do the same, even better, given the fundamental characteristics of transparency, irrefutability, and incorruptibility in data management.
In 2018, I had the opportunity to be among the signatories of the first whitepaper of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), the main association in the online communication category, which focused precisely on this issue of transparency in the advertising supply chain: tracking the delivery path of each single advertising impression from the offer to the final fulfillment, thus reducing current discrepancies.
Could this be a path for the future of digital advertising?
The market will decide as always. What is certain is that the regulations currently being discussed on the tables of the legislator, some already signed, will bring greater security and therefore investments by funds and companies to push for brand and product marketing compatible with the real opportunities offered by web3.
The metaverse as well as NFTs are trends within this new generation of the web; they may like or not, but only those who have truly understood and deepened them can find the right balance, knowing how to translate them best for their marketing.
Today, the blockchain is more understood as a paradigm than as a technology; however, new trends and new functionalities will lead to finding other synergies and a concrete form of application.
If we look today at what was realized in the 1990s or 2000s, this seems extremely elementary to us. Probably, in twenty years, a similar article will read “once upon a time, there was web3.”
Tiziano Ippoliti – Co-Founder of Eldorado Agency SRL – a company specialized in web3 training and services.
