NEWS: Widget AdNets

Big media in little places: CBS, DoubleClick, expand widget ad options

CBS is offering a local widget ad network where a third-party site located in the same geographic area as a CBS television station can run a widget that features news clips from the station as well as CBS’s own ads. Local blogs and other social media sites are new competitors to local television. This is a way for CBS to make money and gain traffic through these sites at the same time, turning them into partners, not just competitors, with CBS at the center. CBS has been one of the big media companies to aggressively experiment with widgets and social media, such as its widget that shows sports scores, here...

Numerous startups have already been experimenting with running ads within widgets on web sites, including Clearspring (our coverage) and Widgetbox (our coverage), and so have numerous Facebook application ad networks such as RockYou, Slide, Social Media, Lookery and others. But it hasn’t been clear how these companies could find large amounts of advertising revenue — the answer may be brand advertising, because the large advertisers that companies like CBS and DoubleClick serve are hungry for better ways to reach users. John Battelle of Federated Media (which VentureBeat uses for some of its advertising) has more thoughts on the evolution of brand advertising here.

Adify Widget Share Powers Content Syndication for Publisher Networks

Adify Widget Share transforms online networks from simple advertising vehicles into communities with captive audiences. By providing access to exclusive content and publicizing the most recent updates across the entire network, widgets drive more traffic across all network sites. As a result, media owners can generate higher advertising rates through increased page views and traffic, and better targeting based on valuable information about their sites' readership interests. Different from viral widgets, only publishers whose content is on-target and reviewed by the editorial team of Adify's Network Builders can access and showcase these widgets.