Widgets: The Marketer’s Recession Survival Tool (Michael Jones)

Great post by Michael Jones of UserPlane / AOL - if you want to know about widgets, quickly, read this: Widgets: The Marketer’s Recession Survival Tool. Some high-lights:

"In April 2007, comScore estimated that widgets reach 177M people every month, or 21% of the worldwide online audience. Currently, only a fraction of widget traffic – perhaps as little as 0.5% - is being monetized. And that 0.5% is being monetized most frequently through traditional CPM models. In order for widgets to pay off in the long term, however, new models are required that will drive revenue beyond the top few widget providers and generate significant returns for all customers investing ad dollars...."

"The convergence of behavioral intelligence, distributed advertising models, and micro-markets is helping to create a sweet spot for widgets. eMarketer predicts an increase in the behavioral targeting market to $3.8B by 2011 from $350M in 2006"

"The very definition of CPM is also changing as new models for media buying emerge. New ways to purchase and monetize connections between brand and consumers will emerge, including opportunities to move the point of purchase to these distributed applications. Not only will widgets incorporate ads based on individual behavior and areas of interest, but widgets will likely become e-commerce services as well"