Widgets – What are they and how do they work?
Widgets have increasingly found a place for themselves on the internet as it gradually evolves towards the web 2.0 platform. But many are still none the wiser as to what exactly a widget is. In its simplest terms, a widget is a piece of embedded code on an HTML page. Social network sites are the trailblazers of web 2.0 and it is sites such as Facebook and MySpace that have seen a surge of widgets popping up all over the internet. When Facebook decided to open the floodgates to 3rd party applications on their website, over 15,000 have found their way onto our Facebook profiles. This represents a massive advertising opportunity and many predict that widgets have a massive part to play in the future of online advertising.
Widgets – An Ever Growing Marketing Tool
Marketing experts are excited at the potential of widgets and SEO and advertising experts are increasingly looking at how to implement them in the field of internet marketing. Research shows that in America, companies will spend an approximate $40 million on widget based advertising in 2008, up from $15 million in 2007. A report by Dynamic Logic shows that 51% of internet users aged 18-34 visited a social networking site at least once every few days. As such, the popularity of widgets on such sites is seen as a key marketing tool for online advertisers and companies are increasingly turning to internet marketing experts to come up with a successful marketing campaign centred on widgets.
Why Widgets Are Winners
Widgets are undoubtedly proving so successful as they are a perfect fit with the shift that the internet is undergoing towards social networking and bookmarking websites. In a market where consumers time-shift television, spend hours customising their social networking profiles, check user reviews before they buy and digest web content from various sources, the use of widgets is a good fit and consumers are increasingly embracing them as part of their internet experience. The beauty of widgets, according to advertising professionals, is that they don't rely on dragging people to a destination but instead take the content they want to showcase and deliver it to the consumer.