iMedia: On the creative front, widgets appear to be the natural evolution of rich media display advertising. There are already established players in this space. How are you integrating with those platforms?
Radfar: Widgets served as rich media is clearly where things are going. We are a partner-driven company and believe that by working with leaders in the advertising and reach media space, we can make our clients more successful. As such, Clearspring has established an exclusive partnership to integrate with PointRoll to create our SnaggableAd product. With PointRoll owning nearly 70 percent market share in rich media online advertising, we think that we can create some serious value. In addition, we have also integrated with most of the leading ad networks and ad servers including DoubleClick and MediaPlex.
Pashman: Clearly rich media ad units are a natural starting point for branded widgets. We announced the first deal in the marketplace back in November with Eyewonder. Our Wildfire technology enables users to install content directly from an ad unit -- basically converting an Eyewonder ad unit into a widget. We expect to see lots more activity in the rich media space throughout the first quarter of this year.
iMedia: We're starting to see more examples of quantifying the momentum effect enabled via widget-based campaigns on social networks. What are your firm's capabilities regarding tracking interaction/engagement?
Radfar: Since creating the first viral analytics hubs for widgets in 2006, we have invested heavily in understanding widget distribution and have developed patent-pending technology in that area. We understand what the affinity distribution paths are and then visualize a topography that identifies the hubs responsible for the higher performing through-put.
Metrics standards are critical for the success of any space. As such, we are working tightly with folks in the online measurement space to standardize viral metrics like these, as adoption of metrics is crucial to the success of the ecosystem.
Pashman: Gigya is tracking approximately 2 billon widget impressions per month. We track stats like total posts and impressions -- both of which can be queried by day -- and date range as well as by unique ID. We also track viral distribution patterns so advertisers gain insight into where their ad is getting traction. Because widgets allow advertisers to interact with their audience in new ways, we also give advertisers the ability to track any interaction metrics they want. So if the widget has three videos and six MP3s, the advertiser can give us nine different tags and track the interaction of the widget and what songs/videos are most popular. There is no restriction on the amount or type of interaction metrics an advertiser can track inside the widget.
iMedia: Are marketers "getting it" for these types of analytics?
Radfar: I think so. Clearly CPM is not going to disappear right away, but there is definitely a trend toward embracing new models and metrics. We are engaged with web metrics experts at all levels. Those parties, as well as our customers, are definitely asking the right questions -- they want to understand how you could look at particular data on a page. They're interested in the fact that we're calculating time spent, grabbing all of the clicks and how to instrument their widgets to collect custom events, like unique sequences of interaction.
Keep in mind that for the advertiser, there are analytics about the widget, where it's going, what it is doing, etc. And then you have an ad tag, potentially, that's served into the middle of that widget that's capturing different metrics. And that's where I see our value, pulling in that unique widget engagement data versus the data that the ad tag will produce. In the near term, I think we're most likely going to see variations on CPC/CPA type models applied to widget-based ad buys -- a CPI (interaction) if you will -- because whatever is simplest will be the most used and marketers are comfortable with pay-for-performance metrics. But realize that the way in which companies measure, value and pay for widget campaigns is changing rapidly.
Pashman: I think the question you are asking is, "How are advertisers defining success" for these kinds of campaigns? Even in traditional campaigns, hitting CPC or impression metrics doesn't mean a campaign is successful, but experience shows that hitting certain metrics is likely to impact brand awareness, sales or other business and marketing goals. We think it's important to work closely with advertisers to define campaign success in the early stages, both to figure out how these campaigns can achieve some traditional brand goals, but more importantly how to achieve other goals -- new brand insights, identifying and getting feedback from real brand advocates.
<< Previous page
Larry Everling is the president of Grady Rose Consulting. Read full bio.