It seems that every VC I meet out here in Silicon Valley is talking about Widgets these days. They love the low development costs and easy portability. As personal publishing becomes more wide spread, being able to cut and paste useful little applets into one's site seems to be gaining consumer traction. Advertisers can either run ads in syndicated widgets or create their own from scratch. Two companies that seem to have some early traction selling ads within widgets are www.musestorm.com and www.clearspring.com. To see an example of a widget that was made by a Brand — check out http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=247a812c-7b75-48fe-9d81-014fced67528&bt=1