After more than 15 years in startups, Nikki he currently leads developer marketing for Apple Arcade.

There are two sides to every coin, and with the Web3 “coin” (pun intended!), the end-user benefits associated with Web3 come with commercial hurdles. In the world of Web3, when and how will what is good for the consumer align with what is good for the business?

My most recent previous employer was a startup focused on facilitating Web3 by building a new real-time Internet. Leading their marketing was a litmus test in Web3 marketing, and I got burned. Here, I explore the ROI behind the Web3 business and what it means for marketers.

What is Web3, again?

First things first: As TADSummit’s Alan Quayle (where I was a panelist) put it succinctly, Web3 is simply a marketing term that lumps concepts like decentralization, blockchain technologies, and the token-based economy into “Web3.”

Web 1.0 was the first stage of the World Wide Web. Created in the early 1990s, Web 1.0 consisted mostly of static, read-only web pages. Then, in the early 2000s, Web 2.0 ushered in content delivery networks (CDNs), dynamic content, and most recognizably, social media.

WebRTC is free, but making a Web3 experience is not.

People now expect to be able to use Google Hangouts, Skype, WhatsApp and the like for free. At the same time, today’s increasingly mobile users require WebRTC, the default technology that underpins Web3, for high-quality, global, virtual interaction, but the adoption of WebRTC in mobile applications comes at a cost.

With the arrival of Covid-19, companies that allowed people to connect seamlessly in real time between countries and continents thrived. Case in point: Zoom, which saw usage of its platform increase 30-fold in April 2020. But Zoom has since returned to its pre-pandemic stock price, despite what is arguably still a necessity. .

My most recent startup employer strove to monetize Quality of Service (QoS) features in addition to WebRTC. The argument was that by providing more stable and reliable connectivity, customer service representatives would resolve issues faster, resulting in happier end-users and lower customer service costs in the long run. However, the company went bankrupt in 2022.

Web3 needs WebRTC, and yet WebRTC comes at a cost. This is because while WebRTC is a free and open project, integrating WebRTC into a Web3 application involves minimal development, server, and infrastructure costs. Today’s consumer empirically understands the value of frictionless, real-time communication, but that value is not properly calculated in dollars transferred to the end user.

How can you trust a decentralized identity?

User interaction on the web today is based on proving one’s identity. From online shopping to social media to signing up for an email account, when you use an online service, you share your identity, and you do so with traditional identity management systems that rely on centralized intermediaries.

In this Web3 world that is built on a notion of decentralization, that philosophy also applies to your online identity. If companies build decentralized identity systems on public blockchains like Ethereum, individuals could retain control and ownership of their identity-related information.

On the bright side, decentralized identities could mean increased security, privacy, and inclusion. On the downside, this essential anonymity can remove accountability and breed mistrust.

In the same way that blockchains can confirm transactions over a peer-to-peer network, perhaps the blockchain could also verify our identities. Imagine if karma was added to your self-identification, and that karma was earned and verified by the network.

What is the role of marketers in helping Web3 become mainstream?

Web 2.0 companies started investing in Web3 in the last few years. Facebook’s rebranding to Meta is the most immediate example. But Meta investors are “100% against” the magnitude of metaverse investment spending, and the company has seen a cumulative operating loss of $9.1 billion since the third quarter of 2021.

Many other Web3 implementations are cosmetic, such as Twitter, which allows users to display an NFT of their own as a profile picture, or Spotify, which allows artists to promote their NFTs on their profiles.

Web 2.0 companies typically block users by owning all the data that exists on their platform. This is mainly how they grow and generate income. Web3 breaks that lockdown model by making data public and giving custody to users. This creates an open standard interoperability that favors the user. But it remains to be seen how Web 2.0 companies can or will evolve to truly adopt Web3 principles, standards, and features without fundamentally changing their business.

As marketers, we have the opportunity to evangelize the benefits of Web3 to a B2B and B2C audience. This requires taking a concept that is currently explained in daunting or boisterous terms like “blockchain,” “decentralization,” and “cryptocurrency” and making the opportunity tangible. We should explain to users how our products help them control their own data, be more secure, own their creations, or interact anonymously. Imagine the opportunities for consumers, and therefore businesses, when we recognize and expand those benefits. Communicating complex concepts is what marketers do best, which is why we’re possibly in the top position to move the Web3 industry forward.

Web3 and all of its associated components, from blockchain to NFTs to decentralized identities and more, may be what Facebook and Web 2.0 were over a decade ago. But I believe that the solution to generating a return on investment in Web3 will require more than an advertising solution.

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