What Does AdXpose Mean for Online Publishers and Bloggers?

As some of you may have seen last week during ad:tech San Francisco, Mpire Corporation -- the parent company of WidgetBucks -- launched a new branded service called AdXpose. To clear up any confusion, AdXpose is completely separate from WidgetBucks.

AdXpose helps give interactive advertisers more insight into how their brand campaigns are actually performing online, no matter where their display ads run, including multiple ad networks (even those outside of WidgetBucks), exchanges and/or direct publisher placements.

At first blush, this may seem very advertiser focused and of no interest to you, the publisher. But alas, AdXpose has significant implications for all publishers, whether in the head or Long Tail.

The bottom line is this: Publishers have the potential to earn more money because AdXpose provides verification information around ad placement and reach to agencies, networks and advertisers. In other words, advertisers and their agencies now have a system that tells them if and when ads ran in view on properly targeted sites or blog -- and this confirmation means the ad placement carries more value (i.e. you get a higher CPM, assuming a couple of things about your site -- see below).

Last week, Mpire's CEO Matt Hulett demonstrated AdXpose to a room full of publishers during the conference and the response was tremendous. Many publishers approached Matt after the panel wanting more information and asked lots of questions, both tactical and challenging.

So, as a publisher, what do you need to do to empower your site or blog business to reap the rewards of AdXpose technology? Publishers need to ask themselves two questions when it comes to addressing this shifting paradigm of online media:

1. Does my ad inventory strategy provide value to advertisers? That is, is there a blend of above and below the fold placements? Do they complement the content?

2. Does my site content appeal to advertisers who want to maximize their spend and/or that are hyper-protective of their brands?

AdXpose is currently in invite-only private beta for key partners, so WidgetBucks and non-WidgetBucks publishers likely won't see the impact of placements and targeting for a few weeks.



We'll provide updates along the way here on the WidgetBucks blog, as well as the AdXpose blog.

- Dean

Forbes: New automated tech firms reshaping digital media

Forbes.com posted an insightful piece today on the rise of an emerging set of ad technology companies that are helping brands conduct their media buying more efficiently and effectively as people increasingly spend their lives online.

Mpire Corporation, maker of both WidgetBucks and AdXpose, was among the private companies cited in this lengthy article. The other technology companies in the piece include Mpire partners OpenX, Rubicon Project and Pubmatic, as well as Google and Yahoo! [full article here]

Matt Hulett, Mpire's CEO, (pictured) was quoted in the article -- "We've seen half a billion dollars of venture capital poured into building optimization and planning companies." -- and Mpire's new service -- AdXpose -- was highlighted as well:

This week, Hulett's firm unveiled an application to help advertisers track on which Web sites networks place ads, where on the actual screen the ad appears and if Web surfers pause their cursor over the ad. The tool is intended to help marketers better figure out how much of their ad spending is essentially worthless.

For more information and background on AdXpose, check out last week's press coverage, press release, and demo on YouTube.

- Dean

It's Time to Vote! Seattle 2.0 Awards 2009

This may be considered a very "local thing" but every vote counts, no matter its location. The Seattle 2.0 Awards recognizes accomplishments and exceptional people of the best of over 300 Seattle area technology startups. Voting ends April 28.

WidgetBucks is honored to be a finalist in four categories:

• Best Startup CEO: Matt Hulett
• Best Startup Technologist: Greg Harrison
• Best Blog from/about Startups: Startup Whisperer by Matt Hulett
• Best Venture Capitalist: Bill Bryant, WidgetBucks board member and Venture Partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which led WidgetBucks' Series B funding in June 2008.

Those outside of the Seattle area may not realize the amount of innovation coming from the Puget Sound region from names like Picnik, Redfin, Wetpaint, iLike, and BuddyTV. Check out a full list here. We encourage to offer up your support and vote.

Here's a full list of categories -- Vote now!

• Best Startup
• Best Boot-strapped Startup
• Best Startup CEO
• Best Startup Technologist
• Best Venture Capitalist
• Best Angel Investor
• Best Startup Product Designer
• Best Service Provider to Startups
• Best Blog from/about Startup
• Best Social Event for Startups

The Beginner's Guide to Ad Optimization

WidgetBucks CEO Matt Hulett is a featured contributor in Monday's edition of Adotas, one of the interactive advertising's most targeted publications. Matt delves into the world of ad optimization, where he feels there is a lot of innovation happening today despite very little other good news coming from within the sector.

Matt discusses a group of optimization startups, including WidgetBucks, that are adding a tremendous layer of value between the supply and demand. These companies are still getting funding when other sectors have gone dry, and some have even been acquired recently.

The five areas of focus in what Matt calls the "ad optimization stack" include:

• Container Optimization. Companies such as SnapAds, Tumri, Clearspring, Gigya and WidgetBucks
• Targeting Optimization. Companies such as BlueKai, Exelate, Lookery and OthersOnline
• Yield Optimization. Companies such as Pubmatic, Rubicon Project, YieldBuild, YieldX and WidgetBucks
• Exchanges. Companies such as Right Media’s Publisher Media Exchange, Microsoft’s AdECN, DoubleClick
• Auction-based marketplaces. Companies such as ContextWeb's ADSDAQ, AdBite, Turn, Google AdSense, and Yahoo! Publisher Network
  

Check out Matt's full Adotas post here.

Make Room for AdSpace - Special Discount Code Available

There is a new conference called the ADSPACE Contextual Advertising Conference + Expo on April 22, 2009, at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco. It is co-located and associated with the ad:tech conference that runs April 21-23.

There are two tracks, one focused on small to medium sized publishers and another focused on advertisers. WidgetBucks CEO Matt Hulett is participating on a panel, "10 Proven Methods to Increase Your eCPM and Generate More Revenue." Hats off to the folks who put this together -- it promises to be a very informative few days.

For those who might want to attend, here is an early bird code that is good thru this Friday: Promo Code: ADSPACEB. It will deduct 20% off the rate of $395. At times like this, every bit helps.

See you in San Francisco.

- Dean

Three Reasons Why Amazon Should Buy Twitter

Matt Hulett

With Twitter currently experiencing explosive growth and visibility, WidgetBucks CEO Matt Hulett takes a look at why it would make some sense for Amazon to buy Twitter. Check out his blog on AlwaysOn's VC & Money section -- a good read. If you're having a hard time visualizing it, below is a mock up of what might look like if Amazon were to integrate Twitter into its listing pages.

Eric Engleman of Seattle's TechFlash also wrote about this today as well.

Speaking of Twitter, check out this like-gold add-on that makes your Google searches real-time with Twitter.

Do you use Twitter? If so, start following WidgetBucks here.

- Dean

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)

WidgetBucks December Payments Distributed

WidgetBucks earnings for December 2008 were distributed to publishers today. Our apologies for the delay in payment this month.

WidgetBucks Publisher Payment Update

Last week we announced WidgetBucks payments would being made today- Feb. 17 - due to the odd timing around the previous weekend and U.S. President's Day holiday. Unfortunately, due to an unrelated technical glitch with PayPal, those payments are further delayed and are now scheduled to be delivered no later than Feb. 23.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

- Dean

WidgetBucks Reporting: Enhanced (and Proud of It)

Gary Kamikawa, VP, Interactive Marketing

Don't say we didn't warn you. When you use WidgetBucks' updated MyWidgets reporting pages, you are knowingly and willingly using performance-enhancing data. That's what WidgetBucks publishers are going to find when they log in to MyWidgets reporting pages today. Publishers can now:

• view by-country reporting within their MyWidgets page
  
• download data reports as a CSV file (to view within Excel)
  

We heard from many publishers who wanted this feature given their amount of blended domestic and international traffic, so the wait is over. This change ultimately helps you as a publisher figure out exactly how much you are making in the U.S. versus the UK, Germany or France, for example. (See WidgetBucks' full list of CPC and CPM countries)

In all, publishers' MyWidgets pages now consist of four reporting sections, or tabs:

• Summary. This view continues to roll-up of all impressions, earnings and total eCPM, along with the graph of daily earnings and all the widgets you've created listed below.
• Widget Detail. This view breaks down the performance of the widget by the type of advertising "views" (as we call them) of CPM, CPC, and International CPM (that is, CPM ads for countries not supported by a CPC widget) advertising.
• Referrals. This view lists all your referred WidgetBucks publishers and what amount you've earned through them. In case you haven't heard, WidgetBucks has increased its Referral Program payout to 15%! Check out our new referral creatives here.
• By Country. As discussed above, this view breaks down the traffic at the country level for impression, click, and revenue volumes. Each of these reports can provide useful information for optimizing our advertising to best fit your site and the type of traffic you receive. Note that the country-level reporting is only from February 5th forward. We had to change some of the ways we tracked data and this could not be applied retroactively to provide a more historical view.

Combine all four tabs (click the screen shot above for a better view) with the ability to download any report to a Excel/CSV file and the analytic crowd can have some fun playing with the data. We hope these new features prove useful to you and as always, we welcome your feedback on things you'd like to see added to the WidgetBucks platform.

If you feel you are having trouble with these new features, please contact us at WBHelp [at] widgetbucks [dot] com

- Gary Kamikawa
VP, Interactive Marketing
WidgetBucks

PaidContent: In A Widget Economy, Is Your Ad Smart Enough?

The notion of a "widget economy" was the focus of a post today by PaidContent writer Tameka Kee, who took a look back at recent investments in widget companies and asked, now a year later, if the opportunity is still viable. It's an interesting read, which includes WidgetBucks.

eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson provided this perspective in the article: "This is still a developing market, and most of the companies are spending their resources on making the widgets smarter, more intuitive and improving their tracking capabilities." Kee called out WidgetBucks and Gigya as those companies that have built in-depth analytics and other features into widgets.

If you are a WidgetBucks publisher, you know this means YieldSense, WidgetBucks' yield-optimization technology that makes publishers' ads super smart so they provide the best rate of return.

- Dean

WidgetBucks December Payment Timing Alert

This post is to alert WidgetBucks' publishers that December 2008 commission and referral payments will be distributed on Tuesday, February 17 -- exactly one week from today. Funky calendar timing has February 14 & 15 falling on a weekend and February 16 is President's Day, a national U.S. holiday, meaning payments are being pushed to the next business day. Thanks for your understanding.

- Dean

WidgetBucks Profiled on Vator.tv

Earlier today, Vator.tv, the voice of the entrepreneur, posted a WidgetBucks profile on its site along with a video interview with CEO Matt Hulett. If you haven't looked into Vator.tv, you should. It's a social media company for businesses, leveraging community-generated content to connect investors, strategic partners and startups. The site's CEO and co-founder is Bambi Francisco, who started the site a little shy of two years ago. If you've followed the tech space for any length of time, Bambi's name probably rings a bell. She's written for Dow Jones MarketWatch and also produced at CNN's financial news network.

She did a nice job of capturing WidgetBucks in this piece. Check out the written piece here or the video below, and/or view WidgetBucks' profile on Vator.tv:

See this video on Vator.tv »

What's in Your Affiliate Marketing Toolkit?

Dean Jutilla, Director of Marketing

As many of you may know, WidgetBucks increased its Referral Program rate to 15 percent recently, so as referred publishers earn money through their ads, affiliate marketers get more bang for their WidgetBucks.

What you may not have noticed is that WidgetBucks has also updated its Referral Toolkit, a whole new set of pre-designed ad creatives with related code for easy placement on your site. (Note that you'll need to be signed-in to your WidgetBucks account to view this page).

There are 20 various sizes and new creatives from which to choose, including six of the popular 125x125 size option, animated ads and plain text referral links to include in your email and forum signatures. Each is also integrated with TypePad, WordPress and Blogger. Just grab the ad code, drop it into your site and you're done.

WidgetBucks Referral Program highlights:

• You earn a 15 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the publishers you refer.
• You receive this 15 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins.
• Payouts to you are monthly, along with your commission payment.

Here's how one WidgetBucks' publisher used the code on their blog.

- Dean

Former aQuantive CFO Michael Vernon Joins WidgetBucks Board

Matt Hulett
CEO, WidgetBucks

I wanted to jump on the WidgetBucks' blog this morning and share with everyone that Michael Vernon has joined our Board of Directors.

For those of you who know about Michael, this is a real coup for us here at WidgetBucks. For those of you who don't, Michael was the former CFO at aQuantive (acquired by Microsoft in 2007 for $6B -- yes, with a B) so he knows online advertising technology, knows how to inject ‘big thinking’ into an emerging company like ours, and he's a fantastic complement to our existing experienced Board and management team. His background includes being responsible for financially guiding aQuantive to profitability and a multi-billion dollar market cap before the Microsoft acquisition.

He joins WidgetBucks' Board at an important time, as we hit our second full year of rapid growth after seeing ad impression volume grew by 150 percent over the course of 2008.

In Michael's words: “When it comes to core fundamentals within the online advertising space – monetization, expansion and targeting – WidgetBucks is well positioned to be a big ad play. What further attracted me to this appointment is the management team’s successful history, new proprietary optimization technology, including YieldSense, and their sound financial backing and infrastructure.”

We've added a lot of industry experience lately. Michael is the third industry veteran to join WidgetBucks’ management team and/or Board in the last several months: Chief Revenue Officer Kirby Winfield joined in August, while Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bergstrom came on board in October. Combined, the two chief officers represent over $3 billion in shareholder value from past acquisitions.

Welcome, Michael!

- Matt Hulett
CEO, WidgetBucks

WidgetBucks Ups Affiliate Referral Program to 15%

WidgetBucks is boosting its Referral Program payout to a generous 15 percent (up from 5). This means that when you refer a new WidgetBucks user, you will receive a 15 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people you refer. You'll receive this 15 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins.

Your referral fees will be credited to your account and paid monthly, along with your commission payout. So, if you refer someone, and they make $100 in commissions, we pay you $15; if they make $1,000, we pay you $150. This continues for a whole year on all the commissions they earn.

Be sure to access our Referral Tools page for pre-designed affiliate ads, tag lines and logos of various sizes. Here are some serving suggestions for your affiliate referral code:

- signatures (email, forums like Digital Point)
- sidebars on your site or blog
- Twitter feed
- Facebook, LinkedIn & MySpace profiles


- Dean

WidgetBucks Publishers Earning More with YieldSense Without Lifting a Finger

Dean Jutilla, Director of Marketing & Social Media

Chances are you're into online publishing and blogging to create content that interests you, and not necessarily because you're passionate about online advertising. But truth be told, you probably spend significant time on your advertising because, well, it's an income stream and there are bills to pay.

Well, we hear you. Today, WidgetBucks has launched a solution designed to help you out. It's called YieldSense, which is new ad technology that maximizes the rate of return on your WidgetBucks ad widgets. And what's even better news? You don't have to lift a finger.

Once you've signed up and created your widget with a self-selected product category (laptop computers, for example), YieldSense automatically tests (translation: you do nothing) your selection's performance against a whole variety of other product sets to determine the one that makes you the most money (highest eCPM). Essentially the top-earning earning products categories on your site get the highest rotation.



YieldSense has been beta tested for about three months with thousands of publishers across millions of impressions. The results have been nothing short of fantastic. On average, publishers have seen around 60 percent increase in their CPC eCPM and some have even seen 200-300 percent booms in their CPC eCPM. Across the board, four out of five publishers have seen improvement.

On particular publisher -- Techno4.us, a social networking site that serves 75 million ad impressions a month -- saw the eCPM of one particular WidgetBucks ad grow 156 percent to an amount nearly two and a half times the industry average eCPM for social networking sites.

Techno4.us owner Rigo Rojas: “WidgetBucks is my top earning network because their ad widgets don’t look like typical ads. They are different and catch the attention of the audience, making them more effective. Plus WidgetBucks is easy to deal with and treat me like a business partner."

So today, YieldSense analyzes shopping products. In the coming months, it will determine the highest yielding channels/content feeds (shopping, text, local, travel) and ad models (CPC, CPM, CPA) for your site or blog.

To find out more, view the YieldSense product overview or this demo.

- Dean

Putting the 'e' in CPM

Having recently spent a week in Las Vegas enjoying Affiliate Summit West, I had an interesting conversation that I thought might benefit some of our own publishers. It’s about the importance of “e” in eCPM. Most people that do any advertising are pretty familiar with what CPM, CPA, and CPC stand for. And I’m sure there will be a host of people which will defend the benefits of each one for being the best way to make money online. Fortunately when you enter the world of “eCPM” it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day it IS all about eCPM.

eCPM is really “effective CPM.” It means if you took all the revenue you made from CPM, CPA, and CPC advertising and adding them together to determine how much you are truly getting paid per 1000 visitors to your site. When evaluating any mix of advertising it’s always best to calculate your eCPM. I see CPA offers that garner $100 on a lead, while others $0.50. And while one may look more impressive than the other, it depends on how well it’s converting to determine which has a higher eCPM.

At WidgetBucks the same math applies since we mix both CPM advertising and CPC advertising. Since you’re able to earn revenue both in the volume of impressions as well as how many click through on the Shopping, Local, or Travel widgets, we boil everything together as your eCPM value. It is because of this performance companent that placement of widgets becomes essential to optimize your site visitors to earn you the most money. A widget placed in the footer of your site might receive a lot of impressions, however due to the placement will probably not have great CTR to lift the eCPM.

Thus when trying to evaluate the performance of your widgets, spend a moment to look at the Widget Detail tab and compare how your widget is performing both in CPM and CPC revenue and determine if changes should be made on placement or styles. Put the “e” back into CPM by letting WidgetBucks be more effective for you.

WidgetBucks Wins OnMedia ‘Newcomer of the Year’ Award

Each year, the folks over at AlwaysOn hand out various honors and distinctions, some en masse (AlwaysOn 250, OnMedia 100), others in a more singular fashion. That’s the case for WidgetBucks, which has been awarded the prestigious OnMedia 100 Newcomer of the Year award by AlwaysOn.

WidgetBucks was selected from among all OnMedia 100 winners, which are emerging companies recognized by AlwaysOn’s editorial team as game-changing players that are disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities in the marketing, branding, advertising, and publishing industries.

We'd also like to congratulate the team at The Rubicon Project for winning the OnMedia "Company of the Year" Award.

The AlwaysOn editorial team took note of WidgetBucks’ progress during 2008, but we couldn’t have done it without you, our publishers.

Over the course of 2008, WidgetBucks:

• grew 150 percent to 1.5 billion impressions per month, making it the fastest growing online ad network
• signed over 20,000 publishers and bloggers across its network
• broke into comScore’s Ad Net report, the first ad widget network to join the list
• secured $10 million in Series B financing, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• deployed YieldSense, proprietary yield-optimization technology that maximizes publishers’ rate of return on their ad space
• launched a “hybrid” CPC/CPM ad that creates two types of revenue from the same widget instance
• expanded beyond its flagship shopping channel through new feeds and partners and its CPC network into Western Europe
• added two chief officers – Chief Revenue Office Kirby Winfield and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bergstrom – who have generated over $3B in shareholder value through past acquisitions and mergers
• won two other awards -- AlwaysOn Global 250, Mashable Open Web Award

Our CEO Matt Hulett heads to New York the first week of February for the OnMedia conference, where WidgetBucks and the other OnMedia 100 winners will be recognized.

Thanks again, publishers and bloggers! Here's to a great 2009!

- Dean

WidgetBucks November Payments Distributed

WidgetBucks payments for November have been distributed via PayPal and check. As always, we encourage you, if at all possible, to switch to PayPal. It's faster than mail, more secure and there's no fee when receiving the money.

Publishers should note that their MyBucks account ledgers will be updated early next week.

- Dean

Top 5 WidgetBucks Support Questions

While WidgetBucks transitions to a new and improved customer support ticketing system, we thought we'd provide a summary of top issues coming into our customer support team:

1. Why are my eCPMs fluctuating?
We're seeing a combination of things happening, not just across the WidgetBucks network but the industry as a whole: First, simply put, Q1 is not Q4. Each year, during the holiday season, price premiums are built into Q4 ad spends, and as the shopping season passes and enters the new year, those premiums tend to go away. This year is no exception and is a trend we also saw last year on the WidgetBucks network. History has shown that this tends to rebound as the quarter continues.

Second, as the economy has impacted brand budgets, we're seeing more movement, both coming and going, of advertisers across our network. We're working with existing ad partners, as well as pursuing new relationships, to maintain eCPM (effective cost-per-thousand impressions) as things stabilize after the holiday. Nonetheless, see this report on TechCrunch around the trending of eCPMs industry wide.

Our No. 1 goal is to make you, the publisher, more money than on any other network -- and that's what we're committed to. If you are experiencing issues with eCPM, we encourage you to contact Tue Pham (pronounced 'Tray'), Senior Publisher Network Manager, at tue.pham [at] widgetbucks [dot] com (pictured).

2. Why is my application being denied?
WidgetBucks is focused on securing advertiser relationships to create the most revenue for our publishers. As a result, our advertisers need assurances from our team that content on sites containing WidgetBucks ads is conducive to their brand values, and meets our Terms of Use. Applications from sites that contain adult and gambling content, or those with offensive language, get denied. Also, sites that are not completed, still in development or have just a single blog post on them will also get denied. This is consistent across the industry when it comes to approvals (BlogCatalog is another example).

3. Why has my account been suspended?
We are finding that a majority of sites that get suspended are a result of miscategorized or misrepresented content. When this is determined by our content review team, standard protocol is that we email the publisher to alert them of the issue. Frankly, when the content is grossly misrepresented, suspension typically happens immediately. When the misrepresentation is borderline, we contact the publisher and provide them 24 hours to make any adjustments, and if those aren't made or there is not response from the publisher, the account is suspended. Note those that do respond and/or we connect with regarding issue -- and it's resolved -- we can get reactivated quickly and back on the road to top-notch earnings.

We also have sophisticated and proprietary click fraud and impression fraud filter systems in place, and track these systems continually. Refer to WidgetBucks Terms of Use for more details on what content is allowed and restricted.

4. Why is my widget not appearing?
In July, WidgetBucks provided CPC and CPM Country lists, meaning that site traffic from those countries earns revenue based on its designation. For example, visitors from the U.S. and U.K. represent CPC earnings, whereas visitors from India and Ireland represent CPM earnings. If you have installed WidgetBucks ads on your site but they are not appearing, you may be viewing the ads from a non-CPC or CPM country, and therefore no ad would appear for you but WILL appear for people viewing your site from a CPC or CPM country. If you are from a CPC or CPM country, and your WidgetBucks ads aren't appearing for you, please contact tue.pham [at] widgetbucks [dot] com

5. How are payments calculated and paid?
WidgetBucks distributes payments, earnings and commissions to publishers up to 45 days following the month your account balance reaches $50 or more. These are sent primarily via PayPal, with some also receiving checks. WidgetBucks generally does not send checks to countries outside of the U.S.; however, if you are approaching the $50 theshold (and you can't receive PayPal in your country), contact WBHelp [at] widgetbucks [dot] com to make special arrangements.

If you have other questions that weren't addressed here, contact WBHelp [at] widgetbucks [dot] com

Thanks again for using WidgetBucks on your site or blog!

- Dean

New WidgetBucks Support Ticketing System Coming Soon

WidgetBucks is in the process transitioning to an enhanced, more robust customer support system, and as a result, the existing online support ticketing system is currently offline and unavailable to publishers.

While the system is offline, any publishers with a WidgetBucks account issue can email WBHelp [at] widgetbucks [dot] com for support.

We'll alert publishers via this blog when the new system is up and running, along with details on its benefits and features.

Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused or be causing with publishers' WidgetBucks support needs.

- Dean

Affiliate Summit Report: Top 4 Observations

As recession and economic concerns continue to grip Wall Street (and my 401k), there are a group of business folks that couldn't be happier: affiliate marketers. And it's very evident here at Affiliate Summit in Vegas (and supposedly this doesn't have anything to do with the fact that plenty took in the "sights" of the Adult Entertainment Expo that's also happening at the same time here).

But bottom line, here's the naked truth: Affiliates of all kinds continue to see growth in their markets. Here are a few signs that online is still the place to be:

1. Huge turn-out. Affiliate Summit has had its largest show to date with over 3,000 people in attendance. Other conferences I've been to have been plagued recently with companies scaling back and speakers/panelists choosing to drop out at last minute. No sign of that here with crowds and booths filled all day long.

2. Bright future. There's continual talk and encouragement for bigger and better things to come. And I'm not talking about a cheerleader squad trying to lift the spirits of a 'Bama squad getting pummeled by the likes of Utah. It's people that are succeeding online and building huge businesses that continue to view vast opportunities. As Affiliate Summit keynote speaker Gary Vayrenchuk, host of Wine Library TV, a daily internet webcast on the subject of wine, said this morning: too many affiliate marketers are focusing on hitting singles rather than swinging for the fences. And he's a perfect example to show that there is not a textbook way to succeed in this space. Just find a passion and do it.

3. CPA net-o'-plenty. There are more CPA networks than ever before. And the truth is that they are all doing hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in payments each month. The only way this is possible is because every day another brand/company realizes they need to start an affiliate program.

4. Recession Does Not Equal Prohibition. Parties are just as numerous and liquor flowing as freely as in years past. While you have to work a little to find all the great parties, every night there has been plenty from which to choose. And even with the distractions of Vegas, affiliates are taking advantage not only to have fun, but to network and find ways to grow their businesses.

Overall Affiliate Summit is well on its way to another great conference. It continues to grow and mature, and of course, be an invaluable opportunity to the marketplace.

Check out Shawn Collins' Affiliate Tip blog for ongoing commentary and photos of the Summit.

Cheers and happy money making!

Gary Kamikawa
VP, Interactive Advertising
WidgetBucks

Meet with WidgetBucks at Sold Out Affiliate Summit

From Jan. 11-13, thousands of affiliate marketers, vendors, and networks are converging on Las Vegas for the sold-out 12th annual Affiliate Summit -- and WidgetBucks will be there.

For any WidgetBucks publishers attending the event (or those interested in learning more), I'd love to connect with you. Feel free to shoot over an email to me at gary [at] widgetbucks [dot] com. I arrive Sunday and head back to Seattle on Tuesday evening, so hopefully we can find some time in the middle.

If you aren't able to make it to Affiliate Summit this year, I'd encourage you to check out the Affiliate Summit site, as well as the event's blog.

Hope to see you there!

Gary Kamikawa
VP, Interactive Advertising
WidgetBucks

Top 5 Online Ad Predictions of 2009: Not All Doom & Gloom

No matter which way you look at it, 2008 ended on a down note for the online ad market. However, 2009 is not being viewed by all as doom and gloom. Even in a down market, online advertising will continue to evolve. We here at WidgetBucks think that 2009 will bring about some change, much of it positive, in the online advertising world, including:

• Exchanges will start to weed out arbitrage: Much like Google, exchanges will weed out those who thrive on inefficiencies. Much like Google, exchanges want to make more money and squeezing arbitrageurs is a logical next step once you’ve carved out share.


• Ad nets won't die. In fact, strong ones will gain influence: Vertical focus and inventory on sites that have high engagement will define success

• Social Media advertising and widget use will come of age: Audience targeting emerges to create viable CPC and CPM inventory where remnant ruled before and widgets will come into their own as long as they make money for publishers, create engagement for brands, and provide value for users

• Remnant display networks won’t die: Despite popular belief, networks representing remnant inventory will not go away but they will evolve. We think they will focus on performance based sales. Again it will all be about ROI.

• Targeting won't just be a media sales person’s byword any longer: Real integrated behavioral targeting/affinity/demo/channel targeting will bolster movement of offline ad dollars online.

What changes in online advertising do you think will happen in 2009?

- Kirby Winfield
Chief Revenue Officer
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