Like Martha's network but for young males

Web Video hub Break.com is expanding it young male-centric purview with the launch of several new sites along the creation of an affiliate ad network.

With the launch of the network], we have one of the largest male 18-34 audiences out there,” he added. “We’re becoming the gate keeper for males.”

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003702782

MySpace To Get Widgets

http://www.adotas.com/2008/01/myspace-to-get-widgets/

Widget posting instructions

http://www.adaptiveblue.com/install_smartlinks.html

Smart Widget Ads for Publishers "WidgetBucks"

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=74499

WidgetBucks features pay-per-click shopping widgets that help our customers make money fast. They instantly display the most popular products based on buying trends of 100 million shoppers. Thus they are
highly engaging, which means instant dollars for our customers. Our widgets see $3-$6 CPM — pretty good compared to traditional ad networks that deliver less than $2 CPM

Since Mpire launched the WidgetBucks network in October 2007, some 40,000 publishers have signed on--and the company recently hit the 1.5 billion monthly impression mark.
The network primarily features bloggers and other long-tail publishers, Mpire is scaling the tech to handle continuously pumping impressions out across entire blog platforms and larger media outlets.

They tailor to publishers and bloggers to get a widget that is an ad after sign-up. The widget displays relevant content from their advertiers (e.g. Walmart's digial camera offerings on Camera blog). Publisher and Blogger gets paid when users click on ad Widget. They also offer a Referral program.

Advertising.com and Facebook apps

Advertising.com has jumped into the widget advertising pool with a program that allows Facebook application developers to earn ad revenue.
The Baltimore company's new "WIDGNET" program enables creators of Facebook widgets to join Advertising.com's ad network, said Joel Fisher, initiative lead with the company's new product development group.
Facebook's decision this year to open its platform to widget developers not only sparked a tidal wave of new applications but also a number of efforts to help the creators monetize those apps. Earlier this week, for example, Federated Media announced a couple of Facebook application deals with advertisers, including one between HP and Grafitti Wall.

more: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627798

Virtual World in 2007

As 2007 began, the virtual world environment Second Life was riding high on a wave of interest from users and advertisers, but as time went on, many marketers and agencies began to question the return on investment of their virtual projects.

"2007, especially early 2007, was the year of Second Life," said Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer for Crayon, a marketing consultancy. "Late '06 through '07 was this interesting virtual world rollercoaster ride, where coming into '07 everybody thought they had to be in Second Life, and they didn't know why."

Second Life continues to grow and attract the attention of major media firms and advertisers, including CBS and its CSI franchise. Greater competition is also cropping up from Web worlds oriented around specific demographics, especially children and teenagers. Coca-Cola funded PG-13 virtual realm There.com and CosmoGirl. Meanwhile Disney acquired kid-aimed virtual world Club Penguin and switched its own ToonTown offering to a subscription model. Nickelodeon jumped into the mix with Nicktropolis.

As the virtual worlds industry moves into 2008, Verbeck and others predict lessons learned from 2007 will mean fewer small and rushed campaigns will be created, and instead advertisers will look for opportunities to create larger projects tied to quality content.

"People jumped in without a strategy or a plan; there was no quality content to tie to a brand, so user [went] in and moved on," said Christopher Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management, a media company. "Now you're going to see content tied to the brand, and high quality content coming out of Disney and Warner Bros and the CSI stuff. Just like any advertising medium you have to tie your brand to quality content. The risk will be much lower for the advertisers and the brands because people that are experienced with creating content are getting into the space."

"You're going to see a lot more and wider variety of businesses making money off virtual worlds," he said. "Too much was done over the last year and a half that didn't involve money, and that's why you've seen a down side."

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627979


Electric Sheep laid off 22 employees, scaling back its events staff and cancelling several projects, including the creation of an ad network for use within the Second Life virtual world.

"We feel that the time is not right to place more bets on that currently," said Verbeck of the network. "We felt that large scale advertising to the current Second Life user base by real world companies is not a big opportunity in the short term."

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627922

Consumer Widget Vendors

Clearspring with Ad Network
Gigya with Ad Network
WidgetBox
SpringWidgets
SimpleSpark
Netvibes wants to have ad network by end of Q1 08, their new product is called Ginger
Newsgator

Newsweek Widget

Its a pretty straightforward top stories unit, but it allows you to use the slider to extend the range, you can toggle between most viewed and most emailed, and the "clip this feature" allow you to embed it on social networking sites ( I like the iPhone UI for this feature). Has a date and time stamp.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/80897/page/2