Other than winning a Mashable Open Web Award, we haven't heard much from WidgetBucks since the referral ad widget program launched in October, 2007. With over 1 billion ads served in the past three months, WidgetBucks is not only happy with its response from the market, but is ready to take the next step. Behavioral widget ads.
While WidgetBucks already had MergeSense to help you determine the best products to display on your site's widgets, the next step was "to test ad placement within the widget," says Matt Hulett, CEO of Widgetbucks. The new service is called YieldSense. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's quite close in title to another behavioral ad system called YieldBuild, which determines optimal placement of text ads throughout your website.
I had a lengthy conversation with Hulett on the capabilities of YieldSense, because I've found myself particularly interested in behavioral ad techniques being applied to widget ads. I think widget makers with built in networks have a distinct advantage in the amount of data they're able to pull, from CPM to attention data, along with the passive absorption of the experiences of ad networks that have come before them.
Considering the widget market's explosion into every form of web distribution, I found myself asking every widget ad company, like Gigya and Widgetbox, the same question: "when and how will you roll out a behavioral ad system as well?" It's an obvious next step for anyone in the ad market, and more easily achieved with online ads. WidgetBucks perhaps took that step a little sooner than others because its widget network in fact began as an advertising affiliate program.