According to comScore, more than 87 million people -- nearly half of all internet users in the U.S. -- are using widgets. Combine that with the 49 percent of the U.S. adult internet population expected to engage in online social networking on a monthly basis this year, and advertisers have a strong lean-in opportunity for branded interaction.

To understand the value of using widgets in your rich media advertising campaigns, let's first define what a "widget" is. For the purpose of an advertising campaign, widgets are applications with valuable or sharable content such as audio, video, games and animation and, to the user, are most interesting or valuable when that content changes or gets dynamically updated.

Examples of widgets are everywhere these days, such as those featuring live video feeds to events or those with new daily games or audio. Advertisers can distribute online widgets to audiences via a website, a rich media advertisement or even via another widget. Their inherent value lies in the fact that they keep the user continually connected to the advertiser. Widgets become even more valuable to advertisers when users are able to easily grab them and showcase them externally: in their blogs, their websites or perhaps, most compellingly, in their personal social networking spaces. This allows users to share and showcase their affinity for specific brands, products and causes.

Today's most successful rich media and video ad campaigns allow users to engage, interact and then get rewarded; creative that features widget-sharing successfully accomplishes all three of these goals. Yet despite the popularity of widgets, many advertisers still do not understand how they work, how they can be measured and, most importantly, how they can be leveraged to improve results for the associated rich media campaigns. Applications with viral aspects are not new to the industry -- many of the most successful campaigns have included some sort of viral aspect -- but giving active target audiences the opportunity to display and share this content from within their own online venues is a new trend that deserves special attention. Widgets give advertisers a fresh new way to connect to their audience and build loyalty as well as a streamlined approach to measure and report on this viral behavior.

Author notes: Erin Coker is director of advertising services for EyeWonder, Inc. Read full bio.