Nissan has embedded Google Maps with live traffic feeds into its gadget ads, auction houses are pulling in live auction information for items relevant to particular Web sites, and a consumer packaged goods company has put a recipe search engine into one of its gadget ads.
And Honda Civic partnered with pop punk band Fall Out Boy and created gadget ads in which people could submit questions to the band and receive answers, Kim said.
The gadget ads allow marketers a "more emotional response than they are used to in their traditional campaigns," he said.
"In the future, this is probably going to be the model for all advertising across media, but we're still in the early stage of the evolution of these things," said Andrew Frank, a research director at Gartner. Down the road, we will see mobile widgets, TV widgets, widget-enabled devices like Chumby, and widget ads in games and other interactive content, he predicted.
However, it's premature to say if the ads are all that much more effective than traditional banner ads, said Tim Hanlon, executive vice president at Denuo, the media futures arm of ad firm Publicis Group. "It is very early for this hyper-distribution scenario for content, let alone the advertising component of it," he said.
One thing is certain, there will be only more "widgetization" of content and ads, particularly when the distribution is so easy. "This lets advertisers bypass media properties and communicate directly with consumers," Hanlon said.
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