Netvibes and the widget economy

Techcrunch talked to Tariq Krim about the launch of their new 'Ginger' beta. One question that everyone has been askeing about Netvibes is how they will monetize. Netvibes has been very successful and has a fanatical userbase, but Tariq has historically ruled out advertising within start pages. He makes a good point about standards (WIMA guys, where are you?), but rather spoils it by offering YAAN (Yet Another Ad Network).

Netvibes Ginger launched Invites for Netvibes Ginger Beta.

Krim is working on this portability. Netvibes is part of OpenSocial and he’s had Bebo-like discussions with Facebook. “Both consortia would like us to be exclusive on their technology,” he sighs. (Sounds like the platform war is in full swing). Krim says he wants to work with both OpenSocial and Facebook. Ultimately,he doesn’t care where you consume his widgets. By the end of the first quarter, he plans on introducing widget ads in the form of micro-banners and text ads. The problem with widget ads, though, is that there are no standards.

“We need the equivalent of OpenSocial for advertising,” he laments. If only everyone could agree on how to make money, the widget economy might actually come into existence.

Widget based revenues for Netvibes

CNNMoney covers a panel at the MIT Emerging Technology conference that included Tariq Krim from Netvibes where Krim gave his view of widget based revenue on Netvibes:

Are we already moving on from traditional social networking?

But Krim is the first to acknowledge these are early days for widgets. Publishers have to create more, better designed widgets. Advertisers need to figure out how best to advertise on them and through them, and how to sell that advertising.

And did I mention there are no plans for banner ads? Krim says Netvibes should be entirely neutral. There will be advertising, he says, but it will happen entirely through widgets, and those widgets will be added by users. The pressure is on advertisers to come up with creative ideas that appeal to users. But the users, according to Krim, are growing – to 10 million last month.

Gadget Ads

Google Tests 'Gadget Ads'

--interactive applications that advertisers can embed into Web pages, which will add a rich media solution to the search giant's suite of products.

Although Google executives revealed the beta during a marketing summit for the auto industry, the Gadget Ads will be available to all ad categories by this summer's planned launch.

Bloggers around the Web, dubbing them "Google Gadgets," have written about these ad units, a version of which are available for use with the new personalized iGoogle interface.

Like widgets, the HTML-based applications offer advertisers the option to add flash, video, real-time feed, and transaction functionality to typically static display ads.

"But they don't have to be complex," said Zal Bilimoria, product marketing manager, Google. "Anyone who can build a Web site can have a Gadget Ad."

Advertisers will incur no serving or hosting costs to run Gadget Ads, which come in standard IAB ad formats. The ads will be placed through the existing auction system, allowing marketers the option of bidding by publisher's site or content theme. With either CPC or CPM pricing, Gadget Ads can be integrated into an existing AdSense budget.

A new look for AdSense ads

I always thought that AdSense was the most successful widget around and was in fact the inspiration for Snipperoo. Think about it - you get an AdSense account, you generate some code and you paste that code into your site. The code brings you adverts. Then you want to try something else in the same space - or to build a range of variations on  your advert and swap them in and out. Snipperoo was designed to help you do that without faffing around with cutting and pasting code. What could be more widgety than that?
Anyway, AdSense have changed the design of their ad boxes, and not before time. The original layout was looking a incredibly tired and has been copied by every entrant to the text ad space ever since - though does this new version really have legs? Does the curvy corner logo just look a bit 2006 already?

A fresh, new look for AdSense ads.

A fresh, new look for AdSense ads You may have noticed that some of your ad units have started to look a little different lately -- we’re happy to announce that, just in time for spring, we've given our standard ad units a fresh makeover. After extensive testing and research, we’ve found that the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers. We're in the process of rolling out this change to all ad units, and you should see that your ad units are automatically updated over the next few days. But, before you rush to make sure all of your ad units still match your site, please be assured that the fonts and colors of your ads won't be changed.

Pheedo Launches Social Media Ad Widgets

From Techcrunch: Pheedo Launches Social Media Ad Widgets

RSS ad network Pheedo will announce a new service tonight - advertising widgets powered by RSS and incorporating several social media tools.  Readers familiar with Techmeme’s advertising program will recognize the ideas here - companies today are producing creative content to drive visitors to their websites and that content can be leveraged explicitly as advertising.  Pheedo hopes to make this approach scalable and widely deployed.  The widgets can be placed on any web page and in many other ad networks.

An upsidedown world?

Jeff Jarvis in the Media Guardian today on Size doesn't matter - it's who views your content . It's almost the first time I've seen someone come out and say AdSense modules are widgets. Or, more importantly, it's not really about widgets, but about the distribution of content. So 'advertising becomes content.' Is that really an upside-down world?

Now add to this the widgetisation of the web. Content may be displayed not only on your pages but also in widgets - boxes, gadgets and applications - that are embedded in pages elsewhere. This is how much of MySpace is built and how YouTube spreads video all over the internet. The audience becomes the distributor. How do you count that?

And consider Google AdSense modules that are spread all across the web, from NYTimes.com to my humble blog. Shouldn't each of those be counted as Google page views since Google revenue is attached? Doesn't that make Google look even more gigantic than it already is? What this really means is that in the new distributed media economy, owning a site doesn't matter so much as enabling a network. This, in a nutshell, is why Yahoo, the centralised media property, is at a disadvantage versus Google, the distributed network.

Things get even crazier when you consider that if you make a good commercial, the public will distribute it for you on YouTube - advertising becomes content. Now that is really an upside-down world.

Google buttons

You can put this button on your site advertising Google's AdSense. If anyone links through from you and signs up - and then earns their first $100 - you will get a cheque for $100. I suppose it's possible. It took me a year to get my first $100 cheque, but then I wasn't trying very hard in those days. You can choose from a whole bunch of buttons, they are quite pretty:

Google simplifies AdSense code generation

Google has made some changes to the generation of AdSense code snippets.

Code generation - simplified and streamlined

We've streamlined the process for generating your ad and search code. Our guided code creation now makes it easier than ever to create new ads or search boxes that will fit your site. As part of this update, we've consolidated your AdSense for content, AdSense for search, and Referrals tabs into just one AdSense Setup tab - it's the new all-purpose location for code creation and discovering new AdSense features, like referrals.