On January 5th, Virtual Greats launched a new branded marketing program to sell premium virtual goods in RockYou‘s Super Pets app, which allows users on social networks to adopt, train and battle pets of other users.

Virtual Greats has already been working with online communities like Gaia Online, WeeWorld, Whyville, and vSide to sell its licensed virtual goods.  By expanding to Super Pets, Virtual Greats increased its audience by 417k monthly users on Facebook and close to 4.5 million users on MySpace.

According to the Virtual Greats blog:

One of the challenges brands had in being sucessful in Second Life was that while the monthly active population was large (and the time per user, enormous), there was no good way to get in front of all those users.  Well, in Facebook with Superpets we’re now in front of an audience half as large as Second Life, and in Myspace, in front of one 4.5 times bigger than Second Life.

Here’s how it works: Virtual Greats first licenses products from celebrities and luxury brands and then offers these virtual goods for purchase in various virtual worlds and games. In essence they act as middle men for brands who don’t have the resources to create and market their own virtual products (think Elvis Presley) and virtual worlds and games which stand to profit from a cut of the sales inside their online communities.

With the introduction of Virtual Great’s licensed goods, Super Pets users can now purchase branded apparel, accessories, and even catchphrases from their favorite celebrities like Elvis, Justin Timberlake, or Snoop Dogg.  The apparel can allegedly sell for up to $3 per item.