It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with Sequoia backed widget company Widgetbox. To be honest, I’ve never really understood where exactly they fit into the widget ecosystem, as they seem to do a bit of everything.
In speaking to newish CEO Will Price and Senior Director of BizDev Tracy Pizzo, it sounds as if they’ve tightened their focus a bit.
Will Price started off our call by taking a shot at explaining his view of the widget ecosystem. Widgetbox’s view of the landscape of widget companies goes something like this:
The Widget Publishers – these are the hit makers, the Slides and the RockYous of the world who are out to develop their own hit widgets and apps, and run ads across the top.
The White Label Platforms – the big players here are Clearspring and Gigya. As Price describes them, these are the infrastructure players – the guys providing white label tools to big publishers.
The Publishing Tools – This is a newish category of players that I’ve noted as one of my areas to watch – companies like SproutBuilder, Gydget, and the newly launched iWidgets. These are the folks who are building tools that allow enterprises and individuals build and publish their own widgets.
So where does Widgetbox fit into this? Price considers Widgetbox a branded widget promotion / launch network (Nabbr also falls into this category) with a couple of key assets. First and foremost is the Widgetbox gallery, which I’ve long considered the finest in the biz. Price made a point of stressing the SEO power of his gallery – a widget that is included in the gallery will often show up first for its keyword on Google within 24 hours.
(I was skeptical that users are searching for the keyword “widget” but Price assured me that they are)
So while the widget infrastructure guys will provide the publisher with tools (e.g. Add to Facebook!) buttons to distribute a widget, Widgetbox emphasizes inclusion in its gallery as a differentiator.
Where Widgetbox would seem to compete directly with Clearspring and Gigya is in the area of paid installs. Widgetbox powered widgets that are pulled by consumers from the Widgetbox gallery and embedded into the wild become part of the Widgetbox footprint. Widgetbox can then overlay widget promotion campaigns on that footprint – which sounds to me a lot like what Clearspring and Gigya’s ad networks are offering. Price made a point of stressing that Widgetbox was primarily focused on CPA campaigns (e.g. Pay Per Install) as opposed to CPM.
I came away from our call with a clear understanding of what Widgetbox is trying to do, though I’m not sure if there are clear bright lines between the segments as Price described them. For example, I’m pretty sure that Gigya and Clearspring would both very much see themselves as widget promotion networks. I specifically asked Price how he expected to compete with Clearspring’s reach when Clearspring is powering widgets for big media companies like RockYou and the NBA while Widgetbox seems to be powering smaller widget developers. Price’s response was to suggest that the infrastructure providers will have a difficult time promoting across their network without competing with their big brand clients. In other words, while the widget infrastructure providers do have massive reach, how much of that reach is monetizable beyond whatever revenue is being earned from analytics? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Here are a couple of other random notes from our conversation:
- Widgetbox does not run ads on Widgetbox.com
- Widgetbox is experimenting with cross widget promotion (promoting widgets on related widgets)
- There are free and paid promotion opportunities on Widgetbox.com
- They see the lack of IAB standards as a major hurdle in the industry begins to monetize
- They have no plans to become a white label infrastructure provider – their brand is a core part of their strategy
And here are some stats:
- 70K+ widgets in their gallery
- 65K widget creators represented
- Widgetbox widgets sit on 857K domains (MySpace and FB count as one domain each)
- 70% of their widgets are active in any given week
