Google AdSense has raised an army of online advisers who throw money at publishers to put their ads on their website. But a new theme of advertising is gaining momentum – these are Widget Ads. These types of ads are seen on several small sites and are favored by many because of their high payout rates and interactive design. It almost entices the user to play with the ad block and hopefully click on it. The larger publishers are leaning towards banner, text and graphical ads and I have not come across any large site running widget ads.

Widgetbucks is a good example of this type of ad. I looked more closely at Widgetbucks previously as an alternative to Adsense. Widgets have been used so far primarily as a portal to important information that you aggregate from a variety of sources. But the implementation of ads in this format is fairly new and more online publishers are sure to follow the growing trend and start offering the widget format in their ads.

Source: CNET News