WidgetBucks Among AO Global 250 Winners; Twitter Takes Overall Honors

We got some great news today from the folks over at AlwaysOn: WidgetBucks has been chosen as an AO Global 250 winner, standing out from among hundreds of companies nominated across various sectors. We'd also like to congratulate the team at Twitter, which was honored as the Overall Global 250 Winner.

WidgetBucks was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz. Click here for more information on the winners.

WidgetBucks will be honored and recognized with the other winners next week (July 22-24) at the AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford University. This executive event highlights the significant economic, political and commercial trends disrupting the global technology industries.

AlwaysOn produces a number of various annual Top Private Company lists, including its top list, the AO Global 250 (previously AO100). Others include OnMedia 100, OnHollywood 100 and GoingGreen 100.

Many thanks to AlwaysOn, but especially to the publishers and bloggers in our network.

- Dean

WidgetBucks Publishers Now Earning More Revenue from European Traffic

WidgetBucks is expanding its cost-per-click (CPC) network, giving publishers and bloggers two ways to earn revenue from their Western European traffic. Starting today in the United Kingdom, when publishers serve WidgetBucks ad widgets on their sites, visitors based in the UK will now see a short-duration CPM display ad followed by a CPC shopping widget featuring UK-based merchants and products listed in British pounds sterling. (see a sample UK screen shot here)

The CPM-CPC hybrid gives publishers two revenue streams from the same ad widget instance. Before today, only CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) ads were served to visitors outside the U.S. and Canada.

Additional Western European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium will come online over the next two weeks.

From a reporting standpoint, this CPC expansion is seamless. In addition to current CPM impressions, additional impressions will simply and automatically be tallied into CPC roll-up and daily totals, as well as resulting revenue. At this time, we are not breaking out by-country CPC impressions and earnings.

At the left is a breakdown of CPC and CPM Country Lists, the latter of which will continue to see only CPM advertisements.

- Dean

It's May Pay Day!

WidgetBucks payments for May were sent via PayPal earlier today. Checks are being processed and sent later today or tomorrow. As always, we encourage you, if all possible, to switch to PayPal. It's faster than mail, more secure and there's no fee when receiving the money.

- Dean

Will All Online Ads Become Widgets?

It only seems inevitable that all online advertising will be "widgetized" in some way. Our CEO Matt Hulett has been espousing this for quite some time, and as this year increasingly becomes the Year of the Ad Widget, it seems others are adopting this point of view as well, including eMarketer Senior Analyst Debbie Aho Williamson. She just posted "Banner Ads Get Widgetized" on her Next Steps in Marketing blog, indicating that the movement toward widget advertising makes a lot of sense -- and cites WidgetBucks as example, along with a partner, VideoEgg.

- Dean