Web 3.0 & How It Will Change Marketing Forever

We are on the verge of a marketing revolution. Web 3.0 and its endless possibilities will change how we reach audiences and tell stories for eternity. Let’s take a look at the future of marketing and advertising through the semantic web, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, decentralization and 3D.

Marketing and advertising have come a long way over the last 50 years. If someone mentioned the word advertising in the 1970s, you would immediately begin picturing a man in a suit, carrying a briefcase, and smoking a cigarette. If you were to approach him and ask him what he was up to, he would reply and tell you: “I am making a print advertisement. IBM is releasing their new floppy disk.” This is traditional, old-school advertising. Since then, the industry has come a long way. Nowadays, companies are spending billions of dollars to put their products and services in front of new audiences in unique ways: experiences. And with the adoption of Web 3.0, things are going to get crazy in the very near future. Let’s talk about Web 3.0 and how companies can use it.

To understand Web 3.0, we first need to back up to the creation of the internet:?Web 1.0. This term is used to describe a time when the internet was read-only. Communication during Web 1.0 was a one-way street. You would load up a website, read the text and view the graphics, and then close the site. You couldn’t post a picture of your dog or comment on your crush’s selfie. Web 1.0 sites were static and weren’t interactive.?Here?is a look at a Web 1.0 website: the Dole/Kemp online campaign from 1996.

Web 2.0 itself isn’t a new or updated version of the internet from Web 1.0. In fact, the lines between Web 1.0 and 2.0 are murky: there is a clear difference but the transition across the internet took a while.?Web 2.0?is all about reading AND writing. Finally, the internet became interactive, also known to a “Zoomer” as useful. Blogging, tweeting, and posting on Facebook were now possible.

Now, we sit somewhere on the edge of Web 2.0, looking forward to the endless possibilities of Web 3.0: the decentralized web. Web 3.0 will significantly change the way users interact on the internet, as well as the way marketers and advertisers do their jobs. Web 3.0 is a concept that is revolutionizing the internet–and it’s more than just websites and SEO.?

Web 3.0 enhances the user experience by providing hyper-targeted and interactive experiences that will give users exactly what they want before they know they want it. And for advertisers, you know what that means; you’ll be able to hyper-target your ads more efficiently than ever before. Web 3.0 will give advertisers access to a multitude of sources of information allowing the industry to explore a brand-new world of innovation.

There are a few key features of Web 3.0 that will pioneer the future of advertising: semantic web, artificial intelligence, ubiquity, decentralization and 3D. Let me break them down for you, and explain how they might affect your marketing and advertising practices:

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Semantic Web (SW)

The semantic web is an extension of the World Wide Web that provides software with machine-interpretable metadata of all the published information and data on the internet. Put simply, the semantic web allows for additional data to be added to existing and future content, allowing computers to make more meaningful interpretations of content and process information like a human. It’s a little bit scary, but a lot a bit awesome.

A great?example?that I found online is this: If you were planning a trip to the Eifel tower and searching for a place to stay, googling “Paris Hilton” might serve you no good. You’ll end up finding a bunch of pictures and articles of this blonde tabloid-obsessed woman. Not what you were looking for, huh? With the help of the semantic web and metadata, you’ll actually turn up results that you’re looking for–a Hilton hotel in Paris.

For marketers, the semantic web is the future of search, SEO and digital marketing. Incorporating semantic SEO will help improve content marketing, site navigation and local SEO. You’ll be able to better target users based on the keywords they are searching for, and ultimately lower your search spending while increasing your conversion rate. You can also improve branding and establish your subject authority by optimizing your content for semantic search.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

You’re probably familiar with AI, so I will keep this section short. Artificial intelligence is the reason that so many people are afraid robots will take our jobs, which they will if I am being honest. AI is made up of features like speech and image recognition, natural language generation and machine learning. Your iPhone has had AI features for years and you might not have ever realized it. Every time you use portrait mode, that’s AI. When you lift your phone and the screen turns on, that’s AI. What about when Apple Maps routes you around traffic? That’s also AI. Our lives are filled with it, every day.

For marketers, AI can help deliver more personalized messages to hyper-targeted customers at the appropriate consumer lifecycle stage. AI can help predict when someone is ready to purchase a product, improve content creation by automatically creating new photos and videos based on what resonates with audiences or chat with customers and sell them a product for you. The possibilities are endless.

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Ubiquity & the Internet of Things (IoT)

Ubiquity is the idea that something appears everywhere or is very common. Web 3.0, by nature, is ubiquitous. It is accessible by everyone, on every device and can support every application. Ubiquity is made possible by the Internet of Things. Rather than explaining it myself, watch this short video and see for yourself:

How awesome is that? The IoT isn’t the metaverse and it doesn’t make your life virtual, but it makes the simple tasks of your normal life easier so you can spend more time enjoying it, instead.

The Internet of Things will expand the mediums of communication and ways that we advertise to audiences in unfathomable ways. Only time will tell on how companies will utilize the power of IoT.

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Decentralization

Decentralization?means?the internet is controlled by many. It is the millions of devices across the globe linked together in an open network. No one person can own it, control it or switch it off. There are no intermediates that make your data and information vulnerable to attack. There is no risk of server failures because there are no central servers to fail.

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VR, AR & 3D

We are all familiar with VR, AR and 3D. These types of visualizations will change the way we advertise forever; and it is, at its core, Web 3.0. We are already able to drop a pin and drive down the street of virtually any road in the world through Google Maps. Imagine how three-dimensional design and visualization will expand in the future.

Advanced visualization will allow us to create more personalized advertising experiences. We will be able to put our audiences in the middle of a story and make them FEEL the experience. We will replace in-person events with virtual engagements, which is already happening; elevate social shopping experiences by letting users try on clothes and purchase them from their bed; revisit historical events from the ground; and so much more.

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An impending marketing revolution is on the way. Stay flexible and be willing to try new things. There are no wrong answers in Web 3.0. This unprecedented time will change the marketing and advertising industries as we know them. When it comes to Web 3.0, I can confidently say the question is not if.

The question is when.

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Subscribe to my?newsletter, Mad Men On Wall Street, on LinkedIn and bookmark my?blog?to keep up with 225 subscribers who are reading about the latest news happening in the cross-section between the advertising industry and finance world.

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My name is Matthew Rigsbee and I am a senior at the?University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?majoring in Advertising and Public Relations at the?Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Ever since I invested in my first stock in high school, I fell in love with learning about the economy, stocks and eventually cryptocurrencies.

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My goal with this blog is to highlight the intersection of the finance world with the advertising industry. There are so many new advertising techniques that are emerging out of the FinTech and cryptocurrency spaces, and I want to be your guide to understanding how many companies are leveraging these techniques to change the way people, young and old, involve themselves in the markets. I will use real-world examples of how some of the top brands in the FinTech and cryptocurrency spaces are using game-changing advertising and marketing techniques.

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