Mpire launched an e-commerce ad network earlier this month dubbed, WidgetBucks. The Mpire team is pleased to report that we’ve signed up over 30,000 publishers that have generated over 200 million impressions in October. This is six-months ahead of our internal projections. We believe that this growth is due to the fact that a) there is a lack of widgets that generate income for publishers and b) that there is a real need for new ad networks that perform better than traditional ad networks. I also believe that the Mpire team has done a great job delivering a fantastic product. If you are interested, you can read more about today’s results on our WidgetBucks blog.

Most importantly, we’re committed to building a fantastic ecosystem for publishers and advertisers. I want to personally thank our partners for all of their feedback and support.

After a number of months of development, we are happy to introduce Widgetbucks, our new e-commerce advertising network of pay-per-click shopping widgets. This platform is intended for publishers, affiliates and bloggers who are looking for better performing online ads and ways to make money from the exploding widget market.

We’re very excited about WidgetBucks because early beta tests have publishers earning 3-4x what they earn through traditional ad networks. The significance of this is pretty big. According to Jim Kukral, online marketing veteran and award-winning blogger, WidgetBucks represents “a strategy to help publishers get all of their eggs out of Google’s basket…which is a good thing.” Jim, we couldn’t agree more.

The key secret sauce behind WidgetBucks is MerchSense™. This is a proprietary contextual algorithm that automatically places the most relevant products next a blogger’s editorial content. And as a publisher’s site content changes, MerchSense dynamically adjusts the widget content accordingly. Pretty heady stuff. Contextual merchandising is something even huge corporations have been working on for years but not been able to figure out – and we feel we’ve created the Dolby Sound inside the WidgetBucks stereo.

We encourage you to sign up, and when you do, we’ll even give you a $25 bonus to your account to get the ball rolling. Affiliates, you can also earn a 10 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people they refer. This 10 percent lasts for the full 12 months after the new member joins. Read more about our bonus and referral program here

Check out our press release and media coverage in our press room, and send me any comments or questions you might have.

Matt

There continues to be an incredible amount of chatter and attention around widgets these days, even in mainstream media like BusinessWeek. We just returned from WidgetCon in New York City and Affiliate Summit East in Miami, where widgets were also the talk of the town. Looking back on those gatherings, a few things became really clear: Widgets are revolutionizing the Web, standards are all over the map, and monetization models for widgets are still being evaluated. I see parallels between the current state of the widget business and the early days of the online advertising business.

Despite what might appear as a 12-headed monster, we continue to be very bullish on widgets. In May we rolled out our ecommerce widgets, seeing them as a method of distributing our vast amounts of data in bite-sized pieces across the Internet. Based on what we’ve seen, people are indulging. Nearly 1,000 publishers and bloggers have adopted the widgets on their sites in just a month or two, and they are seeing around 6 percent click-through-rate — not bad considering traditional click networks hover around 1 percent, at best. Those using the widgets on their sites make money when someone clicks the widget, is taken to eBay (for example) and then buys or registers as a new user. If that publisher is an eBay Affiliate (which is free to signup), they get paid. Check out our widget sign-up page.

We offer four types of widgets: Mpire Trend Watch widgets (here’s an example at Cyberbooks, which links to new products on Amazon and to auction items on eBay; eBay Movers & Shakers widgets (here are two examples, one at GoGolfSanDiego.com and another at a Webkinz site), which looks at emerging popular items and popularity by volume; Top Searches widgets (here’s a blog that uses it), which displays top key words by category on eBay. Mpire’s Price Check widget has also been getting reasonable pickup, as seen here on ProBargainHunter. See a Top Searches widget on eBay Pop that gets 6 percent CTR and a Movers & Shakers widget on Windorphins.com (also 6 percent CTR). Presently we offer four types of widgets across 21 topics and 74 sub categories, including those that track 2008 presidential candidate items sales on eBay, the most popular “green” items on eBay, and top books on Amazon.

So what’s next for widgets? We talk a lot about this at the office, and listen to our business partners as well. In the short term, the ability to contextualize rich media widgets and make them scalable will be the winning combination, we believe. Longer term, widgets that incorporate video will be available, as well as widgets on mobile devices, those you can transfer from webpage to desktop, and on IP TV sets. Many may have the same recipe with widgets; execution will be the key to success, in my opinion.

So what makes a good widget? We feel there are 4 factors in this:

1. Simple. An overcomplicated mish-mash of stuff won’t get user interest.
2. Viral. A widget needs to be contagious and portable to others.
3. Relevant. Customizable widgets that pertain to the site they live on and match audience with pertinent content.
4. Fun. Unlike typical online ads, widgets can actually be entertaining and dynamic. Get creative!

As I close, look for Mpire to continue innovation around widgets in the coming weeks. We’ve got a few things in the pipeline that expand on our current offering to publishers and bloggers and make it even easier to earn money.

- Matt

Mpire is really thrilled that we were recognized by Time as one of the top 50 Web sites of 2007. More on that article here. One of my favorite excerpts is that Mpire.com was described as “… a shopping search engine on steroids.” Thank you Time for this honor!

As the evolution of Web 2.0 continues at breakneck speed, we’re thrilled that Mpire has been recognized for its place in that evolution. We’ve recently received two awards (blush, blush) that honored us for our service to customers and for the practical ways we’re helping people shop and save.

We were awarded the Star Developer Award from eBay for Shopwave, in recognition by the eBay Developers Program for our innovation, creativity and commitment to the eBay community. eBay, in awarding us the Best User Experience Design prize, loved the way our meta-shopping data and analytics support visual shopping based on popular searches and within popular categories. “Shopwave gives online consumers a unique visual experience,” said eBay’s Max Mancini, Senior Director of Platform and Innovation. It bodes well for the work emerging from our Mpire Labs, and we couldn’t be more excited for the positive response we’re getting from not only consumers (our lifeblood) but from the developer community.

Recognition continued with our receiving a Judges Choice Award from the Under the Radar Conference in the Search category. Up against stiff competition from ChaCha, Polar Rose and Pluggd, we were part of the showcase for 32 of the most disruptive (i.e. eye-catching) companies in a sector. UTR takes a serious hands-on look at “the true innovators fueling an explosion of emerging technology and new business opportunities.”

After demo’ing our product for an industry panel of experts and early-adopter technology insiders – not to mention enduring an audience/experts Q&A and feedback session – we emerged as the top dog in the Search category. This kind of recognition helps bolster not only our reputation, but the fact that in the emerging Web 2.0 world, where esoteric often rules, we’re being recognized for providing real-world practical help.