Forget static banners. Online ads are evolving into mini-applications with video, games, and dynamic content that people like enough to embed in their own Web pages and share with others.
These widget ads aren’t commonplace yet, but they are cropping up more and more, further blurring the line between advertising and content. For some it will come as an improvement over flashing emoticons, dancing silhouettes, and expandable text boxes that cover up the item you want to read on a page.
Many people are already using desktop widgets, which are small applications that update dynamically and offer a limited function for things like calendar, clock, weather, and news or RSS feeds. Yahoo offers them, as do Microsoft and Google, who call them “gadgets.”
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This week, Ford will be launching a new online ad campaign using widgets that will run on AOL sites. The widgets advertise Sync, an in-car system that lets you speak commands to use a mobile phone and digital music device. Sync is powered by Microsoft.
Ads are better in widgets than popping up in the middle of your screen or those horrible animated ads that drive you crazy or those ads that pop up when you curser over them or…
It’s like getting a free tool with an ad attached.
these widgets sure are a clever way to embed ads without being obnoxious.
Alright with me too, but, the developers will be paid by the advertisers to collect info on the user and embed spyware into the widget. User beware.
Other than that….Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I don’t know if this counts, but Yahoo Games is running some sort of animations with their games. These animations tend to slow down the game.
For example taxi gone wild in the free games.
There are no ads in any of my widgets, you can’t beat the diversity and functionality.
#5 – That you know of. 😉
If you want to sell ads, make a widget that will let you see what’s happening with your friends playing World of Warcraft without actually being in the game. While you are work, you can keep tabs what’s happening in WoW being played by your unemployed guild-mates. The rotating banner ads on that widget would be seen by millions of WoWers every day.
That map widget is pointed right at my favorite comic book shop, Phantom of the Attic, on So. Craig St. in Pittsburgh.
Small fricken world.
[Cool. – ed.]
“Widget” is not the preferred nomenclature, I prefer “Interface Challenged American”.
#9 – so you are saying that one is “interfaced challenged” if they prefer to have the information that they look at on a daily basis at their finger tips? I prefer to call you an Asshat Challenged Foreign Fuck!
What a great name, and quite descriptive, since a widget is a useless product that doesn’t have any known function.
Advertising in some form will make its way to your desktop no matter how hard you try. Its the nature of capitalism.