The popularity of widgets as an advertising medium is growing with the help of companies like Gigya, which started as a distribution network and launched an ad network, so companies that distribute widgets can also use them to advertise to the people who view widgets and install them on their social network pages or blogs. Advertisers use video in their widget advertising to show everything from movie trailers to popular TV commercials. Liza Hausman, Gigya’s VP of marketing, discusses how the company distributes widgets and makes them available to advertisers.
iSPOT: Can you provide background on Gigya?
Hausman: The company created a component technology called Wildfire in April ’07 that gave away to widget developers and other content publishers the ability to make their content more easily shared. The technology allows users to grab a widget to their social network profile, blog, book marking site or desktop. It’s basically a one-step process without having to leave the site where they found the widget. Before Gigya you had to go to the widget, copy the code, go to the MySpace page, go into the editing mode and figure out where you wanted to paste it into html. It was quite a multi-step process. This makes it much simpler.
iSPOT: So your company is a widget distribution network?
Hausman: Yes, we have the technology for distribution. On top of that we’ve built a widget advertising network. A subset of the companies that use our technology to distribute widgets are part of our ad network and when someone goes to their site to install a widget and uses our technology to do it, we ask them if they’d also like the advertiser widget. We present a screen shot of the widget and if they say yes, we post both widgets to whatever page or destination they use.
iSPOT: So the advertising is a separate widget?
Hausman: Exactly, with our model the advertiser creates a dedicated brand widget, it’s not a sponsorship model. The advertisers pay to get their brand widget installed on a user’s page where they engage with it on a regular basis. If you’re Disney and you’re promoting the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD release, people aren’t out there looking for a Pirates of the Caribbean widget which might exist on one Disney site so we take the widget and present it to people who are installing other content on their page. Since they’re in that mode, it’s the right time to ask them if they’d like to add content which is something the advertiser created.
iSPOT: So the advertising gets passed along on an individual basis?
Hausman: Yes.
iSPOT: What kind of advertising is included?
Hausman: An example is a widget for a DVD release that might include a movie trailer and a play list of the sound track and info on the actors.
iSPOT: So it’s like a website.
Hausman: Yes, widgets can have all the functionality of a website, they’re smaller so they’re simpler but it’s bringing the website or a similar experience to users where they want to consume that content, as opposed to whether they’ll make it to an outside website.
iSPOT: You mentioned a trailer in that example, so how is video used in widget advertising?
Hausman: It’s used pretty frequently. It depends on the advertiser. For entertainment companies it’s almost always included for anything that has to do with movies or TV. A lot of advertisers might create a compelling TV spot they can use as the focus of the widget. Depending on how compelling the video is, it could either be the focus of the widget or a secondary piece of navigation. It’s also being used by CurrentTV, which has compelling video content so a sponsorship model makes sense where an advertiser sponsors a piece of content. You could be a video content company and the advertising model is to sponsor it or if you’re an advertiser and you want to control the experience you can create a new piece of video where the brand is incorporated into it.
iSPOT: Can you mention some of your advertising clients?
Hausman: Kimberley Clark, Jive Records, which is part of Sony BMG, and Sprint.
iSPOT: Can you explain the three distribution options for widgets — desktop, web embeds and IAB units.
Hausman: The first distinction we make is between desktop and social widgets. Desktop is more utility based and social is the kind of thing that makes you smile, you want to pass along to a friend. As for the three ways of distribution, one is organic, you can seed it by putting out a website or blog and hope people will come by, it’s not a very reliable method because they’re not so compelling that people will find them or share them. The second method is rich media ad units. Companies like DoubleClick and Eyewonder are rich media tech companies that can serve widgets as rich media ad units. Gigya technology allows users to grab rich media ad units and embed them to a page, in addition to playing with it on a page where a user can grab it. The adoption rate for banners is low. Our solution is to reach people at the time they’re adding content to their page. We can reach people at their time of install and present ad widgets there. We have the ability to serve tens of thousands of ad installed widgets per day so we can deliver the scale advertisers need to seed a viral digital ad campaign.
iSPOT: What kind of metrics are used with widget advertising?
Hausman: Impressions is the standard, how many times a widget is loaded on someone’s page. There are viral measurements so advertisers are looking at how is this widget spreading and by what network. On Facebook for every first grab I got ten more or on MySpace I got three more people to adopt it. Less standard are custom metrics, which can measure any interaction with the widget. If it’s a DVD release they can track how many people start playing the trailer, how many watch the complete trailer, how many click on a button to buy tickets, whatever they want to track.
iSPOT: Do you offer those metrics?
Hausman: Yes, we have a web-based reporting system that integrates the data into their ad measuring system.
iSPOT: Do you have any idea how popular widget advertising is and how it’s growing?
Hausman: I don’t have metrics on how it’s growing but there’s certainly a lot more activity in the space and we just started selling advertising a few months ago and the response has been overwhelming.
iSPOT: How do you actually sell it?
Hausman: They buy on a per install basis and pay for performance. If it’s successfully installed, that’s when we charge an advertiser.
iSPOT: So it’s a cpa model.
Hausman: Exactly. We don’t charge for subsequent views. We only charge when they visit a first time. If they visit over and over again or e-mail it to a friend, it’s all bonus for the advertiser.
iSPOT: What kind of audience is there for widgets?
Hausman: They reach active social media users, people who use social networks and blogs. They’re for advertisers who are trying to reach an audience of social media users. The problem until now has been one of attention. The reason why cpms for social networks are so low is that no one is paying attention to them because there’s so many other things they can do on a social network. This is a way of getting users to say yes I want that. It’s a way to reach and engage social media users in a way they want to interact.
iSPOT: Entertainment advertisers are the biggest users?
Hausman: Even packaged goods companies are using them, like Kimberly Clark, which is playing a funny video. If you get creative almost any product can work. Entertainment is obvious because they already have the assets, other advertisers have to create them.
iSPOT: Are agencies creating widget advertising?
Hausman: Yes most are using agencies, which have been tasked with figuring out a social media marketing strategy for their clients.
iSPOT: Do agencies specialize in widget advertising or do digital agencies do it?
Hausman: Not yet, it’s the digital agencies.
