Looks like ShareASale is on to something.
2007 is the year of the widget. As Google continues to struggle strive to keep publishers and advertisers happy and satisfied with its AdSense platform, they are looking towards the future.
That future may be in widgets, or gadgets as Google calls them.
Online Media Daily reports that…
GOOGLE HAS BEGUN BETA-TESTING “GADGET Ads”–interactive applications that advertisers can embed into Web pages, which will add a rich media solution to the search giant’s suite of products.
Although Google executives revealed the beta during a marketing summit for the auto industry, the Gadget Ads will be available to all ad categories by this summer’s planned launch.
Like widgets, the HTML-based applications offer advertisers the option to add flash, video, real-time feed, and transaction functionality to typically static display ads.
“But they don’t have to be complex,” said Zal Bilimoria, product marketing manager, Google. “Anyone who can build a Web site can have a Gadget Ad.”
Widgets, er gadgets, really are the next iteration of display advertising.
Take this one step further into the realm of affiliate marketing. Providing a platform for delivering personalized data based on registrations in exchange for a piece of generated advertising revenue sounds very much like the model which most affiliate and CPA networks already operate under. That is no accident, because serving widgets and serving ads (particularly customized ads based on user choices and user registrations) have more in common than anyone in the affiliate marketing world has taken time to notice.
The link is dead. Content customization based on a relationship (even as simple as user registration or co-registration) and micro-systems of delivery of that content is the new black. Affiliate marketing, with its ability to make relationships, has a great opportunity to make use of widgets and widget delivery to set the larger industry standard.
I think the moves ShareASale has made with its widget deployment and the metamorphosis that Google is slowly introducing into its AdSense platform by utilizing gadgets points to an incredible opportunity for affiliate marketers (and those who should be affiliate marketers but are kept out of the game by the high barriers to entry).
