While branded virtual gifts have been part and parcel of the advertising offerings of large Facebook platform application developers (and Facebook itself) for a long time, Facebook’s redesigned Pages product is allowing businesses and brands to integrate virtual gifts in their own Facebook public profile pages in new ways.
Now that Facebook Pages can have application tabs, brands are developing custom virtual gifting applications, installing them as a tab on their Facebook Page, and promoting the gifting tab from the stream.
For example, check out the new Bud Light page that allows users to send friends gifts carrying the Bud Light logo. When you send a friend a virtual Bud Light, the gift will appear on his or her wall with any message you choose to include. This will then be seen in the updates on all of his or her friends’ home pages, potentially putting the brand in front of a large group of people every time a gift is sent. This creates a huge opportunity to drive traffic to the Fan page, which is mostly comprised of videos of Bud Light commercials and a list of free wallpapers.
