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Widgets: the future of online ads

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This post was also published in BusinessWeek . Widgets: The Future of Online Ads Look to the evolution of television advertising to understand the necessity of widgets in today's online world The sheer volume of Web sites has grown so overwhelming that an increasing number of consumers—not just those in their 20s—are adopting multipurpose tools to help them manage and personalize the vast amount of data thrown at them every day. The mainstream adoption of online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace and personalized home pages such as iGoogle and Netvibes reflects attempts by consumers to make the Web more manageable. This new mindset, not surprisingly, also holds for the way in which the audience is willing to engage with ads. Advertisers, many of which have only just begun shoveling more of their marketing dollars into promotional banners and boxes on Web sites, had better heed this shift sooner than later. Some Web trends prove to be fads, of course. But when hordes o