As reported on Mashable, Snipperoo has launched PayPerWidget – a paid widget / advertising platform that allows widget publishers to buy widget placement on participating blogs and sites.
The easiest way to think of PayPerWidget is as a Google AdSense type program, but for widgets. Participating publishers insert a Snipperoo panel into their sidebar / site, and assign keywords to describe their site. Participating widget developers submit their widgets to Snipperoo, assign keywords to describe their widgets, and indicate the price they are willing to pay for placement.
Snipperoo matches site publishers with widget producers, and presumably, takes a cut of the transaction.
I love it.
When I finished my big write-up of the widget platform landscape, I was concerned that Snipperoo’s positioning as an entirely consumer facing company was problematic:
At this early stage of the game, I would rather be facing the publisher than the consumer. Both the widget directory model and the widget container value proposition seem suspect to me in terms of their ability to attract a large audience. A consumer emphasis also places you squarely in the path of the well funded start pages like Netvibes and Pageflakes, who are basically providing the same services but in the context of a consumer behavior with more proven demand.
By launching PayPerWidget, Snipperoo has leveraged its widget panel / container functionality to get between the web site publisher and the widget developer. To me, this is a more profitable and interesting place to be.
Besides being precisely the sort of revenue model that Sexy Widget was looking for, this platform approach gives Snipperoo a tried and true business model. With content sites churning out widgets at a furious rate, and blog publishers looking for better ways to monetize, it would appear that the timing is right for PayPerWidget to facilitate introductions.
A few months back, there were some rumblings about the potential that widgets have as an advertising platform. Steve Rubel pointed to an example where Bitty Browser was being used as an ad delivery vehicle. It will be interesting to see what Snipperoo’s execution of this concept looks like, if the other widget platforms look to follow, and how much interest there is from publishers and widget developers alike.
If yesterday was a bad day for widget aficionados, today is a good one. Congratulations to Ivan and team.
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