WidgetBucks started out, only eight months ago, as a shopping widget that publishers can place on their sites and earn money through its affiliate program. It's since grown into a full-fledged widget ad network that's been working with a number of brands, and is considered by some to be a disruptive player in the widget ads arena, thanks to MerchSense, behavioral data collection, and other recent developments.
Draper Fisher Jurvetson has contributed towards a $10 million Series B round of funding to help WidgetBucks further the disruption. Existing investor Ignition Partners has also joined this round. DFJ partner Bill Bryant will also be joining the Board of Directors at Mpire, the parent company of WidgetBucks, and DFJ Director Emily Melton joins as a Board observer.
So even though some would consider WidgetBucks to be disruptive in the widget ad, analysis and optimization market, a $10 million Series B round seems to pale in comparison to RockYou and Slide's recent rounds, which total nearly $90 million combined. Even Clearspring, which also began as a media-centric widget offering and moved into advertising more recently, has raised a hefty amount of funding in the past few months.
Does a focus on media sharing within widgets convert to bigger valuations? Compared with other web applications, media widgets as we know them today only became channels for advertising campaigns in the recent past. Creating a widget offering that's immediately focused on generating ad revenue within an affiliate program is WidgetBucks' claim to fame, and focusing on the technology behind widget advertising and its optimization therein is what WidgetBucks appears to be doing right now.