Marketing Widgets: You Saw it Here First : Addiem

The nice thing about the internet is that it time stamps brilliant observations...one that resident guru Jay Berkman made several months ago after tripping over Synovativ Technology's and their Addiem "widget"

Today's article in Wall Street Journal profiles the burgeoning trend in web-based applications that are designed to deliver uncluttered messages to captive audiences. Can you spell Permission-Based Marketing. OK...definitely not a new concept..but its always refreshing to know that we can spot 'em! Article is below:

Web-Page Clocks and Other 'Widgets'
Anchor New Internet Strategy

Gadgets Give Marketers
Access to Personal Sites
Unreachable by Banner Ads

By EMILY STEEL
November 21, 2006; Page B4

To generate buzz for this winter's launch of the film "Freedom Writers," Paramount Pictures decided it needed a cutting-edge Internet advertising strategy. Blitzing the Web with banner ads wasn't good enough.

So Amy Powell, senior vice president of interactive marketing at the Viacom-owned movie studio, turned to something that she and other major marketers see as the next generation of advertising on the Web: widgets. Easily accessible from various Web sites, widgets are tiny computer programs that allow everyday people to incorporate professional-looking content into their personal Web pages or computer desktops.

Typical desktop widgets, also referred to as "gadgets," include self-updating news feeds, clocks, calculators and weather information -- usually framed by or positioned next to a brand name or promotional consideration of some kind. Yahoo and Google provide such desktop widgets as stock tickers and airline schedules. Widgets that users publish on their Web sites or MySpace profiles are generally more advanced, including things such as chat boxes, videogames, polls and video.

Ms. Powell and many other marketers see sponsoring widgets as a promising route to consumers because they integrate advertising onto the Web page. It is a more-relevant approach than banner advertising, she says, and less annoying than video ads that take over the screen. Widgets are also one of the only ways marketers can get inside MySpace pages because the popular News Corp. social-networking site doesn't sell advertising on individual members' pages.

Most types of widgets also offer the marketers the chance to monitor eyeballs, because a user's click on one of these live features can be counted as easily as a click on a banner ad.

"I don't believe in banner advertising," Ms. Powell says. "It's important to create content that speaks to different audience segments where they are."

For the January release of "Freedom Writers," which stars Hilary Swank as a teacher who inspires students affected by violence, poverty and racism to change their lives through keeping journals, Paramount is working with Freewebs, a closely held company in Silver Spring, Md., that provides free tools for consumers to build Web sites.

Visitors to the Freewebs site can upload programs from the movie-themed "toolkit for self-expression" -- including a photo album, video injector and chat box -- all of which can be used on an individual's profile page. The widgets incorporate references to the film, such as a "Be Heard" Web template.

Advertisers can piggyback on Web-page content tools known as 'widgets.'

Set for a December launch, the widgets will build on a YouTube campaign already in motion. On a video posted on a Paramount-created YouTube group, a "Freedom Writers" actor, Jason Finn, talks about growing up in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood. "The way I deal with my anger or the way I deal with my pain is I express it. Instead of bottling it up, I hurry up and write it down," he says in the video, which has been viewed more than 275,000 times since it was posted last week.

Paramount is one of the first companies to embrace what some are calling the "widgetization of the Web," but others are not far behind. Reebok is creating a widget that allows users to display customized pairs of RBK shoes for others to critique. Time Inc. is creating gadgets for magazines such as People, Sports Illustrated and Time to provide live updates. Once dragged onto Microsoft's new operating system, the gadgets will automatically update themselves on a user's desktop PC with news from the various titles.

San Francisco-based interactive agency AKQA just created a weather widget to promote Microsoft Flight Simulator X for Xbox. The widget allows users to virtually fly and find out the weather at any airport through a live feed from the National Weather Service -- giving PC users a taste of what the videogame offers. In the past two months, users have downloaded the widget more than 150,000 times, spending an average of 23 minutes with the flight simulator, the agency says.