As we are currently building the metaverse from the ground up, it is important to understand who the current users are and the possibilities we have ahead of us once we reach mass adoption. Today the metaverse is still very niche, but according to Bloomberg the metaverse market is expected to reach $800bn in 2024, which is almost a double from the $478bn in 2020 and will be four times bigger than the whole video industry (Newzoo). With mass market coming into the picture, we will need more accessibility, immersiveness, security, and expressive primitives to seamlessly onboard not only Gen Z and millennials but their families as well.

The demography of centralized metaverse users like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite have been largely addressed. There has been little research or in-depth analysis of demographics within decentralized metaverses, and it is mostly due to the lack of data available. In this analysis, we look at traffic data (excluding China), which includes demographic data collected mainly from Google accounts and additional third-party cookies and app data. We compare five fundamentally different metaverses: Sandbox, Decentraland, Zepeto, Spatial, and Somnium Space.

Metaverse Overview

If you are a brand and find it puzzling to choose a metaverse to explore, looking at the demography will be determinant to reach out to these metaverse users in a more efficient and engaging way. Here are a few indicators amongst many to look at:

Age Distribution

Users under 34 years old represent between 50% to 60% of the demography within those metaverses, with Sandbox and Zepeto attracting the bulk of the youngest users. 

Somnium Space is a VR metaverse, there is a use case for older people to use VR to see their remote family.

Gender Distribution

There are more women using Zepeto and Spatial than Sandbox and Decentraland, accounting for only 30.4% and 33.3% respectively. The weak female representation in Sandbox and Decentraland compares with the gender distribution on Roblox and Minecraft. However, those stats have increased since last quarter, with an 8.5% increase in women from Q1 to Q2 for Sandbox and a 23.2% increase for Decentraland.

Traffic Share by Country

The United States accounts for the largest traffic share among the selected metaverses. Most of the traffic is coming from Sandbox and Decentraland except in Asia where Zepeto takes most of the traffic in Korea and a good number of shares in Thailand and Indonesia. Spatial is used as much as Decentraland in France and represents a good percentage of the traffic in Thailand as well.

Browsing Behaviors

The browsing behavior between Web 2 socials and metaverses reveals which social media is best to engage with each metaverse visitors i.e., 43.9% of Decentraland visitors also browse Twitter.

We can draw some quick conclusions here:

•  Women have a bigger presence in social, fashion, and entertainment metaverses versus gaming ones 

•  The share of women in decentralized metaverses keeps on growing even during the market downturn

•  In terms of total traffic, the U.S. is the biggest country for those metaverses (excl. China), but the Asian market is bigger if we add up the four countries in the top 10 (Thailand, Korea, India, and Indonesia)

• Twitter is the favorite social media used by metaverse visitors

Hopefully more attention will be put on this demographic data for brands to offer the best experience within each of these metaverses.