What Drives Advertisers Toward or Away From Immersive Virtual Spaces?

The metaverse is hyped as revolutionizing advertising, but practitioners remain cautious. Knowledge of “why” advertisers are or are not adopting the metaverse is limited, because they have not been asked. Through 48 interviews with advertising executives, this research elucidates a complex ecosystem with four affordances (novel advertising space, immersive experiences, specific audience targeting, and communicating brand innovativeness) and four disaffordances (limited reach, anticipated lack of return on investment, lack of requisite technical expertise, and poor interoperability) that underpin adoption. These are shaped by consumers’ and decision makers’ (dis)affordances, as well as by contextual factors such as industry norms. The authors offer an advertising-context-specific definition of the metaverse and questions to guide practitioners’ adoption.