Our leading contender for 2021’s most overhyped trend is also likely the least surprising: the metaverse.

Though there might be some recency bias at play here (Facebook’s Meta makeover came at the end of October), marketers think talk of an entirely new *plane of existence* feels a bit overblown and misunderstood. Is the metaverse the future? Is it Facebook, or is it Roblox? Do we have to hang out with Zuckerberg and wear that silly headset?

“Marketers and brands are treating the metaverse and NFTs as if they were fully realized technology when both have long ways to go,” Dave Meeker, head of Dentsu’s design and innovation practice, told Marketing Brew over email.

Meta, meta, meta

So, what is the metaverse? It’s the “embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content—you are in it,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge. As The New York Times wrote, games like Roblox and Fortnite, as well as social media, have “metaverse tendencies.” But it largely remains a concept.

Naturally, like the internet, the metaverse will welcome brands whether people like it or not. Already this year we’ve seen brands from Adidas to McDonald’s to Chipotle dip their toes into the NFT and metaverse game to varying degrees of success. But we’re still a far ways off before your mom and dad join the blockchain with your one crypto cousin.

• To be clear: NFTs are essentially digital media with a virtual certificate of ownership.
• They’re often dropped by artists, resulting in a community built around these NFTs. Buying NFTs signals ownership in the metaverse—which, again, is still undefined.

Though there’s been incredible work done in AR and VR, explained Eric Franchi, an ad tech investor and general partner at AperiamVentures, “It’s still quite early.”

“The reality is you need all of these formats to be adopted by the hundreds of millions or billions of people that make a market meaningful to advertising,” he told us.

Same drop, different day

Plus, marketing approaches have frequently been relegated to NFT drops from the likes of Taco Bell and Charmin. It’s all a bit…the same.

“In rocketing to adopt the newest thing in the fastest way possible, I worry we’re amputating their real creative potential,” Meeker said, noting that there will be “missed opportunities” if marketers don’t “think bigger”—for example, instead of buying an NFT from a cheap beer company, why shouldn’t our next car title be an NFT? What about an immersive holodeck for the next time we shop for an apartment?

More importantly, it’s still only 2021. There’s a long road ahead.

“We’re hearing brands say, ‘What should our position be on NFTs?’” Ana Milicevic, digital marketing consultant and cofounder of Sparrow Advisers, told Marketing Brew. But Milicevic said there’s not a lot of companies that need to have a strategy for the metaverse, at least not in the short-term. “If I’m a farm-equipment producer, do I really need a metaverse strategy in 2022? Probably not yet.”

Click here to see what other trends marketers think were overhyped this year.—RB

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…social media predictions for 2022 time, that is. But CRM platform HubSpot’s predictions are less “here’s my hot take on the future of Clubhouse” and more research-based.

• During summer and fall 2021, HubSpot partnered with consumer intelligence company Talkwalker to survey more than 130,000 global marketers on how they plan to invest their resources into social media platforms next year.
• But being that omicron has recently made Q4 2021 feel…pretty different from summer and fall, HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar told Marketing Brew he expects this report’s findings to be amplified as the pandemic continues.

The report referenced many social media trends, including social audio and the metaverse. But the real star of the report was short-form video.

• For instance, HubSpot’s report noted TikTok’s high number of downloads (it was the most downloaded app on the App Store in 2021 and the first non–Facebook app to reach 3 billion downloads globally) again and again. But Bodnar told us this trend is more about the short-form video trend than TikTok itself.
• “The shorter-form video platforms are going to continue to really thrive and be successful in 2022,” Bodnar said. “They’re going to be more and more important channels for marketers, because they’re not just gaining awareness, they’re gaining influence over consumers’ day-to-day habits and lives.”

He thinks both Instagram Reels and TikTok will be bigger parts of marketers’ toolboxes six months from now, which feels especially significant considering 69% of marketers plan to put more money toward influencer marketing on Instagram than any other platform in 2022, according to the research.—PB

Like your 10th-grade geometry teacher, advertisers are desperate for folks to pay attention.

Last week, GumGum, a company specializing in contextual advertising, announced it acquired Playground xyz (yes, those are really their names), a company that provides attention metrics to advertisers.

• Now, advertisers using GumGum will be able to measure campaigns via attention metrics provided by Playground xyz, helping them see “how long, in seconds, an ad is actually looked at” according to a press release.
• GumGum said Playground xyz uses a mix of AI and “real eye-tracking data” to measure attention.

So what? Companies providing attention metrics are aiming to give brands smarter tools to figure out whether people are actually seeing their ads online.

• Adelaide, another company that offers attention metrics, raised $2 million last spring and has worked with Microsoft, Mars, Slack, Verizon, and AB InBev.
• In October, Dentsu announced its own attention metric.

Companies like Adelaide say they can predict how much “attention” an ad earns partly by looking at the inventory that’s bought. “If the only thing you do is optimize toward viewable CPM, and you want the cheapest viewable CPM possible, you will get tiny little ads on very big screens and that gets you no attention,” Adelaide’s founder and CEO Marc Guldimann told Marketing Brew in October.

Zoom out: Some of the traditional metrics advertisers have leaned on to measure campaigns—namely, impressions and viewability—seem to be becoming a bit passé. They don’t tell the whole story and can lead to ad spend being pulled from reputable publishers toward spammy sites .

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

: Check out these tried and tested apps that can help you edit anything from TikToks to memes, right from your phone.

SMBs: Buffer made a list of 21 small businesses with impressive social media marketing this year.

Color wheels: This infographic just wants to help your website have a really great color scheme.

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This 1963 Wells Fargo ad is how we’re trying to be over the holiday break.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• As the Great Resignation continues, freelance work has been a silver lining for some marketers
• United Talent Agency acquires MediaLink, paving the way for new brand and talent partnerships
• Lamar Advertising acquires Colossal Media