This could be an entire series of articles unto itself, but virtual gifts are today’s “Too Good to be True” story for interactive marketers.

The premise is utterly simple: Create a small icon that people can save somewhere on their social networking profiles.

As simple as the concept sounds, sending people small icons is generally untracked as an overall trend, but it’s $15 million a year if you’re Facebook (report by Lightspeed ventures). Balloons, care bears, images of drinks… if it sheds a sliver of light on someone’s personality or relationship, it’s often worth a click and a buck.

The Lightspeed report shows a tremendous disparity between free virtual gifts and their dollar-costing compatriots. Their bit of tracking shows free gifts given in the hundreds of thousands, as virtual gifts costing a dollar going at the snail’s pace of a few hundred a day, with demand usually driven seasonally or around holidays.

From a brand perspective, both scenarios are a win. Give a free gift, as Axe has done with the “do not disturb” door-hanger-looking virtual gift, and a few hundred thousand folks will show them off to their entire network of friends. Charge a dollar and give audience members the feeling of exclusivity within your brand, and get hard return on investment for your development costs.

Put in the context of a widget, your brand can become a virtual gift hub. Every gift (if given “publicly;” gifts can also be given so that only the sender and the recipient can see them) not only posts to the recipient’s profile, but to the pages of all the people in their network as an update. Best of all, it uses resources you already have in place.

Your strategists have already outlined all the psychographics that tell you what perceptions your audience members hold to help define their outward-facing personas. Your designers are constantly coming up with ways to explore those perceptions visually. Make a widget with a sharable selection of icons that can be transferred to any number of social platforms, and watch the engagement take off.

The fact is, people love collecting and sharing these trinkets, these artifacts of their personality and friendships. And your brand becomes the conduit for this emotional connection. Naturally fun and viral, when paired with micropayments, there’s no end to the revenue and brand-building possibilities.