Widgets are certainly not a new topic, but are appearing to gain new traction in mainstream media and blogs over the past six months.

Widgets are brand gateways that are rapidly becoming a popular way to market online. A widget is a self-contained piece of code that you can move anywhere on your blog or website, usually found in the sidebar. Widgets include push buttons, selection lists, radio buttons, sliders, scroll bars, text boxes, etc.

There are two sides to every story though, and widgets aren’t immune to that. BusinessWeek featured a CEO Guide to Widgets that included a point-counterpoint series that brought up some great ideas about the benefits and criticisms of widgets. According to "Why Widgets Don’t Work":

Widgets can be a useful extension of your brand, but only if included in a broader portfolio of Internet outreach. Widgets, blogs, online video, public relations, and microsites are all ways to extend your reach online. But you can’t rely on a single application, especially since there are now more than 14,000 competing widgets on Facebook alone.

However, consider the positive future in store for online advertisers who utilize widgets. Web users are tired of online banner ads. Click-through rates are decreasing, and widgets offer a new way to establish a brand relationship while also providing a service. According to "Widgets: The Future of Online Ads":

Right in that little box, without switching sites, users should be able to browse products, customize orders, and eventually make a purchase. Instead of simply trying to build brand awareness, marketers now have the ability to reach out to customers with useful features to enhance their personalized pages on social networks.

So what is a smart marketer to do?

• Think about your audience. A recent survey on ReadWriteWeb shared the startling revelation that almost 50% of Facebook users would use online widgets to manage their financial services if their bank offered it. Forget mobile banking, just tweak the online features!
• Be smart about your widget development. IBM announced its new mashup feature, IBM Mashup Center. This is designed to easily remix information for business intelligence, but the cool thing is that it not only offers innovative mashup technology, but provides another way to utilize the information by offering widget creation. Users can take advantage of built-in Web 2.0 community features like ratings, tagging and commenting to guide users the to the most valuable and useful widgets.

Widgets can offer a cool and more widely accepted alternative to online banner and click-through advertisements. Some people think they are a great and welcome addition to their web experience, others find them annoying and unnecessary.

What do you think?