Part II: Fast Company TV's Robert Scoble Inside WidgetBucks

Robert Scoble

Widely-known tech geek Robert Scoble of Fast Company TV recently visited WidgetBucks' offices in Seattle. Along with talking to WidgetBucks CEO Matt Hulett and CTO and Co-Founder Greg Harrison in Part I, Robert ran Part II of his video interview that featured more with Hulett along with an inside look at new creatives and a short demo by WidgetBucks Creative Overlord Nick Redmond.

Part II of II (Watch Part I now)

Peek Inside WidgetBucks with Fast Company TV's Robert Scoble, Part I

Robert Scoble

Blogger, tech evangelist, author and widely-known tech geek Robert Scoble of Fast Company TV recently visited WidgetBucks' offices in Seattle, Washington, on a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest. He spent some time chatting (and videotaping) WidgetBucks CEO Matt Hulett about the company's background, what we're focused today and where we're headed tomorrow. Check out the video below or directly on the site here, and stay tuned tomorrow for Part II here on the WidgetBucks Blog.

Robert also interviews WidgetBucks Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder Greg Harrison, who explains WidgetBucks' biggest challenge today, its stance on cloud computing and iframes, as well as how lack of Flash capability on mobile devices like iPhone limit the user experience, especially with ads.

Part I of II (Part II comes tomorrow)

Holiday Report: Just Another Manic Cyber Monday

By now, most people have heard of Cyber Monday, the day after the long Thanksgiving weekend (U.S.), which includes Black Friday. While Black Friday is brick-and-mortar stores' day in the sun, Cyber Monday has been hyped by the National Retail Federation as the day that online retailers see the spike in clicks and sales once people get out of the crowds and back to their laptop to shop, usually at work (and lots of other places, too). This year, about 72 million people are expected to shop online on Cyber Monday.

In preparation for Cyber Monday, a new poll from the NRF's digital division, Shop.org, shows a whopping eight in 10 are offering some kind of price promotion, up from 72% last year. Promos include specific deals (38.8%), email campaigns (32.7%) and one-day sales (24.5%). And 22.5% are offering free shipping on all purchases. InfoWorld profiles the report here.

With all this online retailer promotion in mind, ad placement becomes a key issue to taking advantage of this season. Yesterday's post here on the WidgetBucks blog highlighted some key aspects of placement:

1. Think about the placement of your ads and the goal of each ad
2. Marry the type of advertising with where it’s going to be most effective
3. Avoid burying a CPC widget where the user is not likely to see it
4. Place ads where the users' eyes are more drawn and possibly see a product that interests them

One final reminder: Give our Sensible Santa skin a try on your WidgetBucks' ad widgets. With site visitors in the shopping frame of mind, it's sure to catch their attention.

- Dean
Marketing Director
WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks Rolls Shop-in-Widget Holiday Creative

Some of you may have noticed that new shopping ad widget designs, including Shop-in-Widget, are now available within WidgetBucks. These are all-new looks for the season: Thumbnail Bonanza, Single Product Showcase and Triple Product Showcase. Those publishers who choose to spread some holiday cheer within your ads can apply the "Sensible Santa" skin to attract clicks from shoppers. (see left) See this creative highlighted on AdBlab.

You might be wondering about Shop-in-Widget and what it means. These new shopping ad widgets all feature interactive search capability, so in addition to the products you wanted to appear, site visitors can proactively search for a desired product. Upon doing so, they are presented with product search results without leaving their existing Web page.
Within this shopping pop-up (example above), they can find their desired item, along with options for free shipping, discounts and deals, brands and various price ranges to suit their budget. When they click on a item within the pop-up shopping window, they will be taken directly to a merchant site just as they would if they click on the pre-defined product images in the widget.

For those in the U.S., Canada or Western Europe, type "digital camera" (or other item title) into the search box of the Sensible Santa shopping widget to the left, and then click "Search." You will then have various digital cameras presented to you in resulting pop-up window. For publishers outside those geographic areas, sample screen shots are within this post.

You'll find all these new designs within the "Create New Widget" page once you select the "Shopping" channel.

Here's some more details on the new designs:

**Thumbnail Bonanza - this widget shows a variety of products at once and highlights each product individually, giving publishers several chances to earn high-paying CPC revenue
(Early tests show this to be a top performer)

**Single Product Showcase - this ad widget highlights a single product at a time in a carousel fashion

**Triple Product Showcase - this widget is a combination of the previous two, displaying three products at a time and cycles through products individually

- Dean

Halo, Water and Stainless Steel Skins Popular Among WidgetBucks Publishers

Since rolling out the WidgetBucks skin gallery in late July, we've started to see some leading designs bubble up to the top. In taking a quick "skinventory," the widget skins that are getting the most play are:

1. Original Flavor/Classic
2. Slick
   
3. *Halo - Crimson
   
4. Cell Phone
5. *Plain White Ts
6. *Blue Water
   
7. *Stainless Steel
8. *Simply Elegant
9. *Back in Black
10. *Basketball
    

* new skin

What's clear from the list above is that the original two designs offered by WidgetBucks -- called Original/classic and Slick within the gallery -- still have the highest adoption among publishers over the last two weeks.

We figure there could be one of two reasons for this: first, publishers really like them, or two, they aren't clicking through to the gallery beyond the default design when editing or creating new widgets.

The screen shot shows where one accesses the skin-rich gallery within the edit/new widget page.

We'd love to hear from you: What are your favorite WidgetBucks skins?

- Dean

Ad Widget Skin Gallery, DIY Skin Tools Now Available Through WidgetBucks

What do Batman, Halo, GPS Devices and basketball have in common? If you answered that these represent some of the featured designs in WidgetBucks’ new widget skin gallery, you nailed it.

Today, WidgetBucks is giving its publishers and bloggers more ways to create engaging and attention-grabbing ad widgets by rolling out two new features:

• Gallery, a catalog of over 125 pre-designed skins to apply to new and existing ad widgets
  
• Custom DIY (Do-It-Yourself) tools to design your own unique look-and-feel to ad widgets

Gallery
The gallery of off-the-shelf skins map closely to WidgetBucks’ product categories, including entertainment (Batman, celebrities), tech and electronics (iPhone, GPS devices, XM Radio), fashion (handbags, flip flips), sports and outdoors (basketball, baseball), video games (Halo), and more. They are can be applied to six IAB standard sizes and only impact WidgetBucks’ CPC widgets -- CPM display ads will run without the new designs.

Click here to see a demonstration of how WidgetBucks skins can be used on a blog or Web site (or view a somewhat lower-quality YouTube version below), and then take it for a test drive by visit http://widgetbucks.com

You can also check out two skins in action - one on TechCrunch and another on Mashable.

DIY Skins
Publishers who want to 'pimp their widget skin' can use WidgetBucks' DIY design tools. Two basic applications -- MS Paint and Notepad, both standard on PCs -- are all that's needed to create your own skin (one Mac Paint equivalent is open-source software Seashore). This option gives publishers powerful customization ability to enable very integrated look-and-feel delivery of their WidgetBucks ad units.

How to Get Started
We have revamped the page for creating new and editing existing widgets -- and this is where both the gallery and custom tools are accessed (circled in red on the image at left). We keep track of skins you’ve used and/or built over time, and next month we'll be implementing a community sharing feature for custom-built skins.

- Dean

Have You Got Your iPhone on WidgetBucks Yet?

Apple recently halted the online sale of the iPhone, indicating they were out of stock companywide, but publishers can still get theirs on WidgetBucks. Ok, well, these iPhones don't exactly make calls or snap photos -- these are iPhone widget skins and they look very cool on your site or blog.

What's a skin, you ask? Skins simply change the way your ad widget looks. More technical types call this "user interface." The benefit is the ability to make the widget either grab more attention by standing out or blending with editorial content -- depending on the desire of the publisher.

The iPhone skin widget is currently offered in two sizes -- 160x300 (iPhone, pictured to right) and 160x600 (a slider phone, see right sidebar if you are based in the U.S.). A significant number are using these already, including this publisher ebookee.com.

These styles are found within the "Choose a Size" pull-down menu. After selecting, just "update" your code and the iPhone skin will automatically populate on your site -- no need to repaste code.

We Want Your Vote
Over the coming weeks we'll be offering a gallery of various pre-made skins, as well as the ability to fully customize your widgets (think Winamp meets widgets). For the gallery options, we'd love your input on what you'd like to see, so please vote below.

- Dean