Widgets, Gadgets and Apps Oh My!
One of the final session’s of Ad-Tech brought together a panel to represent the whole widget ecosystem. Or rather, as it might be described here: We want to explore the synergies in the widget/social app space, with special emphasis on monetizing tweens/millenials for a potential power panel play. I keeeed, actually this was one of the more practical sessions I attended.
The session was moderated by Jerimiah Owyang from Forrester Research with a panel representing:
The Platform-
Kent Schoen, Product Marketing Manager at Facebook
Widget Development-
Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring Technologies
Analysis-
Jane Felice, Senior Client Service Director, Media and Entertainment at comScore
and an end Client-
Ed Davis, VP of Product Development at ESPN Digital Media.
The best thing about this session, was that it was a genuine panel, rather than a series of short presentations. The moderator led the discussion, and each of the panelists had a chance to jump in when they could contribute.
Owyang first asked for a definition of widget and gadget. Gadgets are the name that Google and Microsoft like to use for Widgets. Facebook, where widgets are really leveraging their particular platform and tend to be more complex prefers application.
Next, the discussion focused on the widget opportunity. Why get into widgets? The consensus was that widgets offer a great opportunity to expand your reach, and allow you to tap into an incredibly large existing audience. As Owyang put it, “why are you tring to build a microsite when there are 80 million people on Facebook?”.
So, what makes a good widget?
First, define what you really want suggests Kent Schoen. “Some applications are really targeted only to a particular niche or group. It may be ok to only hit [an audience of] thousands.”
Ed Davis of ESPN said, “you have to be mindful that you’re building something that has value for someone—it has to be really simple, and has to provide value.” Also, don’t be afraid to fail. “The risk is not really that great, so you can try a lot of things.” One other interesting observation from Ed was that their audience was very sensitive to update speeds—“The faster the data was updated, the more adoption. People really notice if you are updating every four hours versus every minute.”
But, don’t fall into the trap of repurposing existing content into your widget without really considering this as a new medium suggested Hooman Radfar. Also, “people try to compress too much functionality into a widget, so the value proposition becomes diluted”.
For the final question, Owyang brought it down to brass tax—“how do you make money with this?”
Hooman described their widget distribution platform that allows you to “write once, run anywhere”. He suggested that marketers can treat the widget as an ad unit, which ultimately drives traffic to your site. Also, seeding the widget by running it as an ad unit does work well to spark adoption.
“The most successful apps create value for the customer while still furthering brand objectives” suggested Schoen.
”[There is a business opportunity in] extending brand’s reach and taking real estate from other sites. We’re measuring that reach and there is value in that. Monetize the reach, or drive traffic back to your site.” suggests Jane Felice.
I know from personal experience it can be well worth it. In the three months since we implemented a simple but stylish “quote of the day” widget for one client, adoption took off to the point that now their daily widget views are 3x their site page views. So, if you think you have something out there that could be widget-worthy, give it a try.
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