Sound bites that might come handy one day

Call them widgets, gadgets, or wadgets, but businesses such as Kraft Foods, Nissan, and American Express are building brand identity using these software applications that can be embedded in a Web page or downloaded to a computer desktop.
"Widgets hold an interesting creative possibility to create a conversation with consumers," said Jeff Williams, associate director, creative, at Digitas, while speaking with three other widget experts at a Search Engine Strategies New York panel discussion this week.

While popular gadgets feature games and entertainment (Bejeweled, Tetris) or utilities (personal finance calculators, world clocks), advertisers are starting to build and promote their own applications

"Everything we can do as a Web site can be done with a gadget ad," he said. These tools can serve an assortment of marketing objectives, from lead generation to awareness building. He also offered up some best practices: keep ads under 40K, limit animation to under 15 seconds, create an easy-to-click outgoing link, and underline the link so it stands out.

Said Digitas' Williams: "You want to create an in-page experience as much as possible. Just having a widget that links to your [home] page, that's a glorified link. No one's going to buy it."

from: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628832