Posts by Emily Riley from June 05, 2008

Emily Riley | June 05, 2008, 06:54 PM
Promise for advertiser widgets

Just had a nice briefing with Gigya, one of the largest widget platforms out there. They are getting a lot of traction by allowing their widget makers to offer online users an advertising widget as a companion to their own widget. Advertisers get the opportunity to be seen across MySpace, Facebook and others with one buy. It's a voluntary download on the user's part. Surprisingly, campaigns typically will get tens to hundreds of thousands of downloads. Gigya says that the download rate is so good that advertisers buy on a "cost per install" rate and end up paying a decent but not obscene amount - $1 to $2 CPI. They also track the rate of interactions, which have been 11 percent on some recent campaigns.
Liza Hausman of Gigya has three words of advice for advertisers when it comes to designing a popular widget: simple, shiny, and shareable.