Google has been beta testing ads utilizing its Google Gadgets platform for several months, but the company announced last night that it was making them broadly available to all advertisers. While the capabilities of the new units are mirrored in other rich media ad offerings in the market today, they’re very creative and interesting for many reasons.
Dubbed Google Gadget Ads, they represent a blurring of content and advertising, which is par for the course for the Internet, and allow users to place them on their iGoogle pages as they would pure content Gadgets. The ads can support PPC or CPM models and will be distributed throughout the Google content network.
As mentioned, like other types of widgets, the ads can potentially go anywhere that widgets go, outside the Google AdSense distribution network. The ads that will be the most successful will be the ones that look more like content (or are more fun) than traditional online graphical advertising. And there are plenty of local applications possible here. (The Nissan ad [scroll] is one such example.)
Gadget Ads are intended to be more “engaging,” overcoming so-called banner blindness. In the specifically local space, companies such as AdMission and ShopLocal have developed dynamic ad units that offer some of the same features and capabilities.
Screenwerk 
September 25, 2007 at 12:17 pm
[…] interesting and provocative ways. AdMission’s platform can combine inventory feeds (before Google Gadget Ads) — cars, jobs, homes, products, etc. — in real time with branding elements, whether it […]