In February 2011 we attended the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), where we presented the findings of our recent Social Media Monitoring research into McDonald's and the hugely popular social game, Farmville.
At its peak, Farmville had nearly 84 million monthly active users. Audiences this big are attractive to advertisers, and we wanted to look at the collaboration of one of the biggest social games in the world with one of the biggest brands in the world.
Ahead of carrying out more quantifiable research in this area, we conducted some initial social media analysis of the McDonald's promotion within Farmville to gauge some of the issues surrounding branding within social games.
If you would like to read more about this research, read our paper, Brands in Social Games, What the Gamers Say.