Good Morning Silicon Valley

In its continuing mission to organize all the world’s information and put advertising next to it, Google has latched on to widgets, those little mini-programs used to display all manner of information via components plugged into social Web pages and blogs. As of today, the search sovereign is providing tools to let marketers easily build Gadget Ads, interactive units that can be placed inside widgets through the AdSense network. These rich-media ads might display videos, games or other enticing fodder, and given the nature of widgets, offer the tantalizing prospect of a multitude of fixed location ad placements able to be updated in real time. “Consumers are pulling in content from multiple sources” said Christian Oestlien, a business product manager at Google who is overseeing the new ad program. “It is what we are calling the componentization of the Web. The Web is sort of breaking apart into smaller pieces.”