Widgets

I attended a fantastic widget event last night hosted by the SF New Tech Meetup and moderated by my friend Lawrence.

While I went to the event already bullish about the business of widgets, I came away even more excited about enabling new opportunities in this growing segment of the internet. There were close to 600M widget views last month worldwide, according to Widgetbox. That said, even with such immense distributive power, the total advertising spend on widgets in 2008 will only be approximately $40M. There are two possible conclusions that one could draw from these numbers. The first is that the widget business is one that is tough to monetize. The second is that the widget business is still in its infancy and the vehicles for advertising through widgets are just ramping. I would agree with both of these conclusions.

• Widgets are most definitely tough to monetize. Many advertisers worry that because of the distributive nature of widgets, their ads may end up on sites which could tarnish their brand's image.
• The widget business is also a fairly new business. The average person still asks what is a widget? As the widget business evolves and advertisers grow to understand the reach they can have through widget advertising, they will grow more comfortable with delivering ads through the widget distribution channel.

Additionally, the overall cost of creating widgets is dropping towards zero. Last night, there was a demo from Gigya which on top of providing distribution to widget developers also provides tools to advertisers to create branded widgets. Even more impressive was a demo by iWidgets which allows web site publishers to easily create engaging widgets of their content, allowing them to reach their content consumers wherever they may spend their time (iGoogle, Facebook, etc.). Other players in this space include Zembly, which also presented, and Clearspring. When it comes time to search the world of widgets for your specific needs, the place to go is Widgetbox. They are the authoritative gallery of widgets and are quickly approaching a total of 4B widgets served.

While the $40M in 2008 advertising spend seems small, there is no doubt that widgets are powerful and have a reach that advertisers will come to not only want, but expect.

Awesome event Lawrence and Myles from SF New Tech Meetup!