Recently, Google found a clever solution for what has probably been their tougher advertising dilemma ever: Sell quality and contextualized ads on Youtube. It took them almost a year, and a $6billion online ad investment. This goes to show how tough online advertising is right now. The sector is booming thanks to a growing and captive audience, and analytics tools that beat the traditional audience panel a zillion times.
However, Adwords is effective but not very sexy. In-text ads are smart but still invasive. Videos are fun but really invasive and unadapted to the mainstream Internet connection speeds. Actually, any space bought is invasive. This is such a traditional media thing that has been boldly CtrlC-CtrlVed on our Web environments: Buying physical spaces instead of infiltrating the virtual conversations of the 2.0 waves.
There's one online ad tool that is very young and full of hopes: Feeds on a widget. Some companies understood pretty soon that feeds were a great way to export your content outside your Website. Google did hit it big with the Google news. Live updated news make your blog more alive and warm. News agencies and magazines swiftly sealed deals with feeds providers (like Google news) to be in the recommended or default list of choice.
Widgets turned out to be the perfect packaging for displaying feeds in an interactive and flexible way. I use feeds in a widget for my profession, and let me tell you one thing: 1/3 of outgoing clicks from my site are through my widget boxes.
Widgets enthusiasts are leading the wave. In one interview, Lawrence Coburn, Founder of Rateitall, explains how his company - consumer ratings through a widget - grew from rating products to rating all kinds of things. He calls it the "long-tail rating". A widget can offer so much more than a simple display function.
Now burning feeds has been democratized since Google acquired Feedburner, turning it into a free service. Of course, an advertising model came along with the gratuity. Starting at some really reasonable grounds, you can distribute your feeds on selected channels to "pubvertise" your site's content.
With widgets, you are hosting outside information on your own ground, which means that they have a great advertising value; their users should start to be selective. I use my widget box to create ties with my online communities. I've replaced traditional link building by advertising my community members feeds.
These members enjoy having their content distributed, and I enjoy displaying original and daily refreshed information on my site. Plus I'm turning into a valued community member.
Bebo advertised the Bratz movie on widgets that users can display on their page. Discovery Networks is launching a Slide widget campaign around the "Shark Week" TV show. Universal Pictures launched a widget through Freewebs that promoted the upcoming film "Mr. Bean's Holiday." In June, widgets caught the attention of more than 239 million unique visitors (Comscore).
So should online advertising focus on widgets?
I would say it's the best advertising alternative on the Web right, because users display the widgets they like, making the ad a semi user-generated chunk of content, a perfect way to integrate the 2.0 online conversations.
