Its funny that when I first heard the term “widget”, it was Jack Dee using the term trying to sell beer. A few years on, and the term widget is all over the digital space in a massive way. Browsers such as Opera have integrated a widgets gallery for their users to choose from, market places and affiliate networks are now offering variations of widgets to deliver incremental growth, and developers looking for that ‘mashup’ solution are now turning to widgets as a vehicle for innovation and achievement.
Where is this going? From personal experiences, I understand the importance of widgets in the digital age, and what they can offer todays typical user. Todays user is much more online savvy, with the average young adult spending more social time online that watching tv. Social utilities such as the monster Facebook are still trying to understand how they can inject commercial opportunities within the space, without being obvious and overwhelming their users.
Where do widgets fit into this?
My view is that widgets offer diversity in a rapidly growing environment, however marketers and digital inventory owners still have a long way to go before being able to understand exactly what value widgets can provide, and the breadth of commercial opportunities they can achieve through them. At the moment, I see widgets all over the digital space, however I am still to understand or read about widgets that have hit or exceeded performance targets in terms of revenue or lead generation.
Maybe its just early days, or my expectations of widgets as a stand alone mechanism are too high, but if the number of times the term ‘widget’ appears in any digital space is anything to go by, I cant be alone in my thoughts….
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