Metaverse is the future of all digital media: Rob Gilby, Dentsu

Having been in the media and entertainment industry for 30 years, and having visited India in 27 of them, Rob Gilby, CEO, Dentsu APAC, says there has never been a better moment for the country.

Gilby was speaking at the unveiling of the Dentsu-e4m Report 2023, released in Mumbai on February 2. He delivered the keynote address on ‘Creating value in the Web3 digital Economy’ and how we could create value in the Web3 digital economy and support India's goal of becoming a $1-trillion digital economy by 2025.

Remarking that India was more the size and scale of a continent than a country, Gilby spoke about how the government’s insistence on pushing the idea of ‘Digital India’ over the last six or seven years had transformed the country, and coupled with the availability of cheap 4G data, with vast changes in the digital ecosystems of news, entertainment, commerce, payments and much more.

“You not only pioneered success within India but became a model for markets around the world. When 5G launched late last year, I got even more excited because this is the start of your next phase of digital transformation, one where I think you're going to lead the world at scale. And so 5G is not just a backbone infrastructure technology, it enables different experiences and enables different technologies to connect with consumers,” he said.

Noting that Dentsu helps brands make human connections “through amazing creativity, technology and a deep understanding of the emerging media space,” Gilby went on to get to the heart of his speech, taking the audience into the metaverse and Web3. 

“Everybody has a slightly different description of the metaverse and the metaverse has gone through a standard Gartner Hype curve. Various people are at different stages on that hype curve. Some are getting to the peak of the expectations, some have gone over that hill into this solution but beyond that comes the sustainable development of any hype curve where the reality checks in and people understand what their role is, where we're at and how to experiment,” he said.

Gilby asserted that the metaverse is the future of all digital media and commerce and the successor to the current Internet. “Some of you may not believe that, but we're at the start of the journey to do that. Many people at the start of the internet did not believe that it would play the role that it did. And we're at the start of that journey now. But there are some different traits about the metaverse and the role of web three in this next phase.”

Calling web3 the backbone, Gilby opined the metaverse is the presentation layer of web3, and a few tenants were slightly different to those of the current internet.

“The first is value exchange. We hear a lot of talk about tokens, fungible tokens non-fungible tokens, but it's really the smart contracts that enable transactions (of those tokens) from one person to another person without the need of intermediaries in a safe and secure environment,” he said, noting the smart contract systems that are built on top of blockchain are enabling rapid interchange at scale. 

“Another important differentiation is self-sovereign identity. We've grown up in digital economies of the last five to 10 years but our identity was managed by large organizations, amazing organizations that will still continue to exist. But the self-sovereign identity allows the individual to have their identity back and have it protected and to control their data and to choose which applications they engage with and how they interact,” said Gilby.

And naturally, he said, underlying all of this are the decentralized technologies and obviously, the blockchain is the backbone of that. “For brands, one of the questions I often get asked is, yep, that's all very cool and exciting for a lot of the engineers but what does it mean for me? Well, we have to answer that question. We have to think about what it means to consumers. How would they engage with the metaverse?” he pointed out

He said many consumers are familiar with gaming and web 2.0 Plus gaming platforms like Roblox or games like Fortnite are a first step into the world of the metaverse. They are web 2.0 versions, but many of the web 3.0 versions are offering richer, more immersive experiences either on a gaming platform or the web.

“Now a lot of that relies on virtual reality, which requires the coming together of some physical technologies, and the actual production of the immersive worlds that people are entering,” he said, going into the minutiae of bringing together both elements of the technology and experiences.

Gilby also spoke about the increasing popularity of wearable devices and how interfaces between consumers, their environments, the media they consume and the brands they interact with are constantly evolving, and how Dentsu was empowering companies and advertisers to leverage these emerging technologies into a cohesive ecosystem for brands and their consumers to engage, exchange and co-exist.