As people increasingly hide behind self-selected personas online, should marketers target the avatars or the people who created them?

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;" 
-T.S. Eliiot

As our lives increasingly move online, the notion of identity takes on new meaning. Many of us currently use 2D, non-persistent social networks as tools or extensions of ourselves, but an increasing number of people are also using virtual spaces to help define who they are.

Jack Tatar is CEO, GEM Research Solutions, which created the first focus group facility on Second Life.

The line between social networks and virtual worlds is becoming increasingly obscured (as seen in the Facebook Application, Fresbo World).

Recently, the concept "Generation V" has been getting some attention (see Forbes, PC World and Gartner). According to Gartner, more money will be spent on sales and marketing online than off by 2015, in large part because of Generation V.

In light of this movement by consumers to virtual spaces, it is important for marketers to begin to understand how to best market to them in such spaces. It is also important for marketers to understand how consumers behave in these environments and what signals to look for when choosing the right message for a particular consumer.

Using real life research, this article will take a look at how the role of identity changes when people step into virtual spaces, and how marketers can learn to deal with the uncertainty inherent in marketing to consumers in virtual spaces. We approached this article by analyzing two very different virtual spaces, each with its own demographic and environment. WeeWorld tends to skew younger and be more entertainment focused, while Second Life has a more mature audience.

Here's what we found out.

The persona reflects the "true" person
Lauren Bigelow, WeeWorld's general manager of North America, tells us that 50 percent of WeeWorld users are chatting with their real life friends most of the time, as their "real" selves:

"One of our most popular contests is the 'weemee look alike' contest; users compete to have the WeeMee that looks most like them in real life…they are experimenting with who their real self is because that's part of the development process and the nature of that age group in particular…trying out different things relative to dating, friends, culture, family, politics, affiliations and occupations can lead to valuable personal growth."

Findings from Second Life tell a slightly different story. The iAsk Center is a market research facility that has been conducting focus groups in Second Life for nearly two years. Focus groups held there regularly reveal many of the contradictions typically found among avatar "personas" and the impressions created when they reveal who they are, and how they feel in real life.

For example, a recent group assembled participants from across the globe to garner insights for a real world gardening company and included an elderly Australian businessman. Others in the group would not have associated his real life personality with his appearance as a gothic avatar in Second Life. He further confused respondents when he revealed that it was imperative for him to change his real life business into a more sustainable and "green" company in order to help the grandchildren of his clients.

With people demonstrating such stark variation in behavior in different virtual worlds, the questions become: How can you separate the person from the persona or ultimately find the person behind the persona? Or do you really need to in order to effectively market to consumers in such environments?

The answer seems to be -- probably not.

Research over the last two years at the iAsk Center confirms what recent outside studies are showing: Online users are often more "virtually" honest than they are in real life because of their anonymity and ability to shed their external appearance. In fact, what is seen regularly at the iAsk Center indicates that avatars in Second Life may be more truthful about their feelings and opinions. This may be due to their responding and conversing in these virtual worlds not as the person they are in the external world, or the person they are in the virtual world, but as the person that they truly feel they are. 

So what does that mean for advertisers looking to market in virtual worlds?

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