Wise & Young: The nuances of Gen-Y marketing, branding, advertising, trends, & more

MarketWire had an interesting article today; the most important information from the article was the following:

The good news for marketers is that most virtual worlds are capable of offering detailed information about how their users interact with brands and advertising.

“The bad news,” says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst and author of the report, “is that it is difficult to know what all this virtual interaction really means. What value is there in a person’s avatar drinking a Pepsi? Or wearing a shirt bought from a virtual store? What if a person’s virtual activities have no bearing on their real-world activities?”

It would be interesting to see how online virtual brands (brands only in the internet/virtual worlds) reacted/behaved with users compared to “real-world” brands trying to infiltrate virtual worlds. I have a feeling these infiltrating real world brands are shunned or looked down upon by the virtual world users. Does anybody have any input or links to more data?