Widget distribution company Gigya has publicly launched a distribution service for branded widgets, a premium service for advertisers that complements WildFire, its free service for the distribution of non-branded widgets.
As we described last April, WildFire helps to distribute widgets across the web by making it easy for users to install them on their social network profiles and blogs. Provide WildFire with your MySpace credentials, for example, and the service will install a widget onto your profile page, cutting out the cumbersome steps needed to install it manually.
Since Gigya has provided Wildfire as a free service for both users and widget providers, it has had to come up with a separate service to generate revenue. Gigya has opted not to incorporate advertisements into widgets, but rather to push branded widgets (think: widgets as advertisements) through its WildFire service. When WildFire users install regular, non-branded widgets on their profile pages, they will sometimes be offered branded widgets as they wait for their selected widget to install. Advertisers pay a “cost per install” that ranges between $2-5 every time a user decides to install a branded widget in addition to their original selection. The CPI is justified by the number of impressions the widget receives once spread virally over the internet.
Advertisers can track the distribution of their branded widgets with the same sort of analytic tools as provided with WildFire. They can view the number of installs and impressions (how many and where on the web), see where in the world the impressions are being made, and distinguish between original widget installations and those that have spread virally.
Gigya expects to partner with advertisers who are willing to make an investment of at least $5-10k in widget distribution. Sony BMG’s Jive Records, Kimberly-Clark and Disney have already opted to spread their branded widgets through Gigya’s distribution network, which has been running privately for a couple months. The company says that it distributes more than 300,000 widgets per day from over 400 widget production sites.
Gigya competitor Clearspring also distributes branded widgets but not in the same way as Gigya. Whereas branded widgets are suggested to users after they have installed non-branded widgets with Gigya, branded widgets are distributed as IAB standard advertisements with Clearspring. Clearspring also allows advertisers to embed their messages as “in-widget” ads.
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just deadpool it now. platformitis indeed. fb apps, y! widgets, igoogle, myspace apis, opensocial, netvibes platform….who the hell is going to give gigya ten seconds in this mess???
I disagree partially with whoopie. Widget distributors are much like ad networks. They are essentially site aggregators for distribution. The network of sites is really the key. I think gigya and the likes will need to show their value add and if they can sign up sites where users are likely to install widgets, they’ve got a business case. However, I think the number of people who install widgets are a select few. If you’ve ever used y! widgets/confabulator, you’ll also soon realize that a user’s system can only support a few widgets before the system memory gets bogged down. Good luck to them if they can survive and thrive.
MrBuzzSaw - To clarify, Gigya doesn’t distribute widgets onto people’s desktops but rather across the web onto various websites. So the issue of systems only being able to support a few widgets doesn’t apply, although a variation of the problem wherein profile pages get overwhelmed by widgets could.
This sounds like a good move for gigya and those of us who banked on wildfire for a distribution vehicle…
gruvr’s tourmap widget has been using gigya wildfire and its analytics for several months now, and the stats provide an incredibly useful level of detail on how fast and where the widget is spreading.
As I interpret this, I will now be able to simply check a box saying I’d like to make income from ads during widget posts. sweet. The only thing is
it would be nice to have an option of pay-per-click instead of per install.
say if you fellers would like a peek at our gigya dashboard screenshot showing the viral evolution of the gruvr map widget hit me up. It’s pretty interesting, the analytics tell a story - and it looks set to crack 5MM pvs/month after releasing in late Oct.
Sounds interesting….
wow..its cool…
MySpace won’t tolerate that - see banning of photobucket’s spiderman branded ‘video widget’ last year.
#7- Tom:
“MySpace won’t tolerate that…”
are you Tom from Myspace, as “Tom is in your extended network” ?
“gruvr’s tourmap widget has been using gigya wildfire”
what the hell is gruvr? yet another three hundred-hits-a-day pile of awesomeness
whoopie, try reading the last line of the post and multiplying by say 10K:
http://www.quantcast.com/p-5bYR8i0Mbt2aw
I think they need to leverage best-of-breed, proactive peer-to-peer user-centric widgets to monetize bleeding-edge, distributed, granular enterprise networks!
Interesting article. From a developer’s standpoint I have used many of the widget platforms and my personal favorite has been, and continues to be Clearspring http://www.clearspring.com/ Their widget service is easier, quicker, and more feature rich.
St. Stephen,
I would take quant casts metrics with a grain of skepticism, they’re fairly new to the game and are not very mature in their metrics: both in methods of gathering the data and making sense of it.
Also… I agree with Troy, Clearspring is Killing Gigya in deep analytics. Gigya is the poor man’s Clearspring.