Internet Marketing In The Virtual World

The example that comes to mind for me is Second Life and some of the marketing that occurs "in world". It's been a while since I checked that place out, but at the time it seemed like it had quite a ways to go before becoming broadly accepted as a serious marketplace. Even so, there were a few well known vendors in Second Life who made lots of money selling scripts or buying/selling and renting virtual property.

I've always found the virtual world idea to be fascinating and have read up a bit on the subject. As technology advances and the gaming generations grow older and games are more widely accepted as the norm I think gaming interfaces will begin to takeover as the primary method of interfacing with computers and machines generally. When we're all using fiber optics and the latest and greatest graphics cards the idea of the "3D internet" will become a viable reality and likely revolutionize how people interact over long distances. You could literally put on a VR headset like the Oculous Rift and move around in a Virtuix Omni (stationary multi-directional movement input) to step outside your virtual house on the beach to go to a virtual board meeting with team members from around the world and then straight to a virtual golf course or movie theater without ever leaving your room.

There was a time when a few major corporations were talking a lot about Second Life as a platform to display real world products in a 3D environment and allowing people to make purchases of these items to then be shipped in real life. I know that several educational institutions also created virtual campuses where students from around the world could interact simultaneously with one another in ways that other long-distance communications platforms could not achieve. Much of the hype around this seems to have died down, but the ideas are still compelling and will likely be properly implemented one of these days. I'm predicting it won't be Second Life that does it though.

Advertising in the virtual world would likely become much like that of the real world, but in digital representations of the real world. So you would have two layers of products to potentially profit from. You'd have the virtual scripted products and their real world counterparts such that the virtual product could be sold or given away to promote real world versions of the product. There could even be an opportunity to place affiliate links inside scripted virtual versions of those products. You could be walking down the virtual street and view street signs that display ads targeted specifically to you that then offer you a free virtual version of the real world product they want you to buy. It kind of takes the squeeze page idea to a whole new level.

Agree with everything from you, Andreas; especially the portion in bold. This will extend the market is a huge way. I know many platforms who are battling vigorously to integrate this technology.

GRM