Publishers and advertisers at a recent Widget Summit discussed the opportunities for monetization of this tool.

Publishers and advertisers scoured the halls with conversation at this year's Widget 2007 Summit at San Francisco's UCSF Campus in the Mission Bay District to find out how a widget, gadget or web app could be developed, distributed, tracked, and, most importantly, built into a viable business.

"Advertisers traditionally have created static banner advertisements or Flash animations to capture a viewer's attention or promote their products," stated Niall Kennedy, Summit organizer and web technologist. "The recent introduction of widgets as an AdWords unit has expanded advertising opportunities within an already viral format."

Widget Summit attendees learned there are opportunities for monetization in a syndicated widget environment using some of the same measurement and cost structures already supported by the IAB and large intermediaries such as DoubleClick.

Charles River Ventures' Saar Gur launched into the "Widgets Advertising" panel by challenging panelists to quantify the market for widgets, exposing the nascent nature of the tools and how various user interfaces such as MySpace, iGoogle, Facebook might determine the look, feel and standardization of the ad unit future.

"Widget developers are realizing that it's the size of scale of a widget's distribution that can actually make it into a business," Gur said, focusing on the hype around one or two developers building a popular Facebook application. "They don't know how to construct the frame to build a business, beyond creating the application."

Widget advertising was the theme of the panel that featured Ari Paparo, VP rich media, DoubleClick; Murtaza Hussain, founder, CEO, Peanut Labs; and Lance Tokuda, founder, CEO, RockYou. Tokuda highlighted the reality that only a small percentage of widgets can become viral.

According to Tokuda, widget distributors need to come up with good content. It's possible for the two to team up and monetize a widget. However, as Gur noted, various platforms will dictate the kind of content that will (or will not) be monetized throughout their networks.

Tokudo, too, pushed the need for standardization or widgets will not be "a sellable business," he said. However, panel attendee and RockYou partner Ben Pashman, VP of business development at Gigya, disagreed, stating that "while monetization, historically, bespeaks of massive scale, widgets come in all different shapes and sizes and utility and entertainment. Your objectives and metrics as a brand advertiser will define the future of your business. I don't think it's totally necessary to standardize widgets across all platforms."

Advertisers traditionally have created static banner advertisements or Flash animations to capture a viewer's attention or promote their products. The introduction of widgets as an AdWords unit has expanded advertising opportunities within an already viral format.

David Libby is president of LCI PR, a boutique public relations consultancy. Read his full bio.