The Metaverse as Meta defined it in 2021 is over. Meta’s Reality Labs lost more than $58 billion between 2020 and 2024. Horizon Worlds peaked under 200,000 monthly users. Disney, Microsoft, and Walmart all shuttered their metaverse divisions by 2023. What did not die were the four PR principles every brand was scrambling to adopt for it — interactive content, AI customer support, emotional buyer relationships, real-time analytics. Those moved into AI Communications.
This piece, originally published in February 2022, predicted a shift toward immersive consumer experience. The shift happened. It just happened inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity rather than inside a headset.
Where Each Metaverse Bet Actually Landed
Interactive content moved into the chatbox. The 2022 read — that roughly 3% of online content was truly interactive — is no longer the right frame. The interactive surface is now the conversational AI engine. Buyers ask, the engine answers, and the answer is interactive by definition. The brand’s job is not to build a 3D showroom. It is to be the cited reference inside the answer.
AI customer support avatars happened — without the avatars. Klarna replaced 700 customer service agents with an OpenAI-powered assistant handling two-thirds of inbound chats. Shopify, Intercom, and Zendesk all shipped agent-based AI support layers in 2024 and 2025. The avatar was a distraction. The agent is the product.
Emotional brand relationships became citation share. The 2022 hope was that buyers would form deeper bonds inside immersive environments. What actually formed is dependence on the engine’s recommendation. When ChatGPT recommends a brand by name in response to a buying query, that is the new emotional anchor. It is also measurable. See Who Controls AI Answers Index.
Real-time analytics became prompt analytics. The data that matters now is which prompts surface a brand, how often, and in which engines. Omnichannel attribution is no longer just web, app, and store. It is also chatbox. The same retrieval surfaces are now under attack by coordinated bot networks — fake accounts now train the AI.
What Survived From the Metaverse Era
Three things from the 2021–2022 metaverse push proved durable and now live in adjacent categories.
Spatial computing. Apple Vision Pro launched in 2024. Meta Ray-Ban Display shipped in 2025. The form factor migrated from VR headset to AI-enabled glasses. The use case migrated from social VR to ambient AI assistance.
Digital twins. Industrial digital twins — not consumer ones — became real. Manufacturing, logistics, and defense now use them at scale. Consumer brand metaverse stores did not.
Virtual product try-on. AR mirrors and try-before-you-buy survived the hype cycle. Beauty and apparel use them. They sit inside e-commerce, not inside a virtual world.
The 2026 Communications Stack
The PR question in 2022 was: how do we show up inside Horizon Worlds, Roblox, Decentraland, and Fortnite? The PR question in 2026 is narrower and harder: how do we show up inside the answer ChatGPT gives when a buyer asks the category question?
That discipline is Generative Engine Optimization. The mechanics include structured data, primary-source citation density, named entities, and the structural shift toward retrieval. The buyer no longer reads ten blue links. They read one sentence.
The Through-Line
The 2022 piece argued that the consumer-brand relationship was about to become immersive. It became immersive in a way no one was building for at the time. The screen disappeared, but it disappeared into a conversation, not a 3D world.
The PR firms that built metaverse practices in 2021 and 2022 had the right instinct on the destination — immersive, AI-mediated, real-time — and the wrong instinct on the venue. The venue is the chatbox. See AI Communications.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Metaverse dead?
The consumer-facing Metaverse as Meta described it in 2021 has collapsed. Spatial computing, AR try-on, and industrial digital twins survived. The communications principles attached to the Metaverse pivoted into AI Communications.
Did any brand actually win in the Metaverse?
Gucci, Nike, and Ralph Lauren ran widely covered drops on Roblox between 2021 and 2023. The campaigns generated press. They did not generate durable channels. Most have since wound down.
What should a brand do instead of a Metaverse strategy?
Build for the answer engines. Measure citation share inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Treat structured data, primary research, and retrieval surfaces as the new shelf.
Is AR/VR coming back?
In a different form. Apple Vision Pro and Meta Ray-Ban Display are framed as AI-first devices. The headset is now the interface for the AI assistant, not a destination in itself.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
