Mpire Launches Widgets for eBay and Amazon Affiliates
Duncan Riley
15 comments »
Mpire launches a new widget service today with over 75 different widgets aimed directly at eBay and Amazon affiliates.
It’s a crowded space. On Sunday Michael Arrington described it well with a post aptly titled “The Attack of the Advertising Widgets“. A natural first reaction is what? more widgets!
I caught up with Mpire CEO Matt Hulett and Co-Founder Dave Cotter earlier in the week and it’s a question I had to ask. After a decent 30 minutes I found there was a lot to like about Mpire’s new widget offering, and some great potential. Yes, more widgets, but these ones are different.
The defining feature that makes Mpire widgets stand out from the crowd is dynamically grouped content. The widgets incorporate Mpire’s meta-shopping data, creating shopping trend results across 15 categories, including entertainment, sports, fashion, technology, games and youth/teens.
A widget can list and link to the top searches at eBay for a particular topic, for example Baseball. A widget covering fashion can provide a dynamically updated price watch chart. For lovers of Second Life, one widget provides updates of Linden Dollar average sales prices from eBay.
The new widgets have been in private beta testing prior to today’s launch and can boast of some significant results. On average in testing, CTR rates with Mpire’s widgets were up to 5 times higher than a comparable banner or Adsense unit.
The new widgets are completely free, and surprisingly do not require registration (although it is an option). Affiliates simply insert their affiliate code when setting up the widget and get to keep 100% of all profits made. There’s no revenue sharing model and affiliates deal directly with eBay and Amazon for payment.
I asked Hulett and Cotter the obvious question: where’s the return?
We’ve covered Mpire previously here and here. As well as offering an on site shopping comparison service, Mpire also have a browser plugin that provides comparative shopping data.
The aim of the widgets from a corporate view point is to drive awareness and traffic back to the core product.
What better way of getting your name out there than having thousands of people running widgets that include your company name and link in the footer!
The only draw back I could find from a publishers view point was a lack of dynamic contextual delivery. Much like AuctionAds (a TechCrunch sponsor), the widgets are delivered contextually only to the point of the topic placed in the code. For example a Digital Camera site would code the widget to run digital camera data, but the widget doesn’t pick up if the particular page is about a specific item, say a Panasonic DMC FZ 50, my own particular camera of choice. A fully fledged contextual version is something Mpire is considering for development at a later date.
John Cook at Seattle PI has more coverage.
on an unrelated note, the TV show veronica mars showed a character in business class (or something) creating a mockup of a startup called “grademyass.net.”
Sounds like a useful widget (aren’t they all that
) Now if only we could get one for Europe as well. 
Here’s why
When American launch innovating product and start to raise the price on product. Guess what happen to wall street. Crash…
High oil price.
High electric bill
High heat oil cost
High rent cost
High internet cost
etc…
GDP would make expensive: Shipping, etc…
It will not “NOT” make U.S.A rich…
Looks so Interesting and useful too. and thansk for the post
Raj
http://www.technobuzz.net
Go type “SEGA” What golden axe cost $20-$25.00?
You can get golden axe for free.
It’s right on internet.
This is why I avoided auction scams…
Product not for me…
I’d like to see a Skype the seller widget with a 60-second cam.
Doing this will create a shopkeeper presence.
Provide one widget displayed in ebay listings, showing the latest “live” pic from the seller’s cam, and encouraging buyers to click to chat directly with the seller (an alternate message if seller is not currently available, a message when they expect to be back).
Provide one widget for sellers to display on their desktop. When someone clicks their sale widget it connects up to the sellers desktop, and they start chatting.
I have used the mpire addon, and it is fairly useful, but my one complaint was actually mentioned. That is, the the comparison shopping data is not product specific, only product-category specific. When one is looking for a specific product type, one usually looks at reviews and specs. With that info, the specific model that meets the requirements can be found, and it is at that point that the comparison data is relevant (to that specific model).
yeah if you can drill down to exactly what you want - its useless ..
-RB
The question of how they are going to make money remained unanswered.
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We Will Create Your Very Own Domain Name - http://PowerNamer.com
I am don’t see how this can compete with AuctionAds. They are not doing geotargeting so unless you have only US traffic your wasting money. Also there payments are net-45? Ill take 0-day with AuctionAds thanks!
They don’t actually make direct money on the widgets themselves, but more of brand awareness and interest in the shopping stuff they offer. Also it doesn’t look like they manage the affiliate relationship so it’s not quite the same as auctionads. So the payment is through either the eBay or Amazon affiliate terms, not Mpire.
From a blogger perspective, I guess it’s more of what do you think is more interesting to your readers, contextual listings, or topical links. I’ll wait to hear what someone does to compare ctr on the two types of ads and how the actual payouts measure.
This is a great start! Already put a couple of their widgets on my site. Would like to be able to do more customization (like with Google Adsense) of these ad widgets: text/link/background colors, widget size, etc.
Most of their widget sound promising, I hope they get out even more.
The addition of the dynamic contextual would be excellent.
I am surprised eBay hasn’t added affiliate incentive to their To Go widgets when they launched them earlier this month.