Most online social media present virtual goods to visitors: be they in the form of badges for being part of the community, or gifts in the form of pixilated teddy bears, or plants given as gifts to other users. These social profiles take advantage of the human desire to collect and be noticed for our activities—around the office, desks with stuffed animals, pictures of vistas, or tchotchkes abound. Virtual goods sit in the same place in our social psyche.

And now, it’s been discovered that selling or giving away branded virtual goodies produces more revenue than those unaffiliated. The revelation of this unbound is written up at eMarketer Blog,

This is a subset of the larger virtual goods market, but a particularly lucrative one for marketers and virtual platform developers alike. The “Branded Virtual Goods Market Report” from Viximo and Virtual Greats describes the popularity of branded items in social game and virtual world WeeWorld. According to the report, Snoop Dogg-branded items have sales 2.5 times greater than the bestselling items of comparable price without branding.

And for brands, there is evidence that virtual goods lift awareness and purchase intent. In a study conducted by InsightExpress for application marketing firm appssavvy, mobile app users exposed to a campaign where they received branded virtual goods via a location-based application showed significantly higher mobile ad awareness, aided brand awareness and purchase intent than the control group not exposed to the virtual goods.

While people may gravitate to the generic teddy bear when giving a pixel-picture gift for a few bucks to a friend, merchandisers learned long ago that toys and gimmicks based on popular media sold a great deal better. Take one look at a McDonald’s Happy Meal, they contain toys which exemplify this thought in the consumer’s mind, albeit the consumers are children, but adults do this also.

Another revelation for businesses, especially with the recent launch of Facebook’s Places, is that they can connect to visiting customers even better than before. Branded virtual goods give them walking advertisements on the FB profiles of their customers—again back to the Happy Meal, buy a product at the store, get a branded pixel badge. Friends will be able to compare badges, see who likes to shop where, and how often.

Interested in learning more about Facebook Places? Click here.