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But in Web. 2.0 language, the term refers to an application that is portable and accessible through the click of a mouse. Widgets are simply graphical user interface icons or buttons that, when inserted into third-party Web pages, kick users over to a provider's servers, where Web applications consisting of video, social networking and other media features reside in a format designed to appear seamless to the customers' site. And while the definition of the function of these so-called "applets" might still be tough to pin down, widgets have come to be defined by their ability to deliver advertising and other emerging forms of monetization, and for venture capitalists that means that "widget" translates to "eminently fundable." At least seven widget developers have landed significant rounds of professional venture capital funding in the last three months, with the latest being Seattle-based Mpire Corp., which announced Thursday that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Ignition Partners for its Widgetbucks e-commerce advertising network of shopping widgets for Web publishers, affiliates and bloggers. Mpire was founded as an e-commerce shopping site, but hewing to the rapid expansion in the market for widget creation and distribution, the company is targeting most of the new money in that area. Mpire joins Chumby Industries, which raised $5 million in March from JK&B Capital, Avalon Ventures, Masthead Venture Partners and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures; WorkLight Inc. of Israel, which raised $12 million in April from Pitango Venture Capital, Genesis Partners and Index Ventures; Mozes, which raised $11.5 million in May from Norwest Venture Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners; Sprout, which raised $5 million in May from Polaris Venture Partners and Global Venture Capital; Clearspring, which raised $18 million in May from New Enterprise Associates, Novak Biddle Venture Partners and ZG Ventures LLC; and RockYou, which raised $35 million in June from DCM, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. In addition to these recent fundings, publishing widget maker
SphereSource, which had raised about $4 million in funding from Hearst
Publishing, Trident Capital, True Ventures, Radar Partners and
Blacksmith Capital, was sold to AOL LLC in April for a rumored $35 million. - Clifford Carlsen
Comments
From: Cliff,
If that is a direct comparison, that is a big duifference, but it seems that eCPM (effective cost per message) is measured differently http://www.adsensebility.com/Adsense_CPM_definition.html
Posted on:
June 13, 2008 12:03 PM
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The
great thing about the word "widget," before it was highjacked by the
high-tech media world, was that you weren't supposed to know what one
was: It was just a catch-all for a mechanical component.
What is most interesting is that even though they have a name - widgets - in this case, it is essentially an ad network optimizing the ads for the best possible eCPM. On their about page claims a $3 to $6 eCPM for their ads. Most networks, even those that are optimizing such as YieldBuild, Rubicon and Pubmatic are under $2 eCPM. If they can in deed obtain that eCPM then it is a fantastic opportunity for publishers and advertisers assuming the high eCPM is due to a high ROI for them as well.