CBS Widget Helping Bloggers or Helping CBS?

CBS Television has released a widget for bloggers that is supposed to work as an income enhancer for CBS and the blogger in markets where they own the local station. It is widgetized affiliate marketing. By releasing their own local ad widget, CBS has cut out the middlemen like Commission Junction and LinkShare.

The early reports of the widget experience is that it is clunky in interface and unfairly gives CBS the advantage in revenue. Of course, since CBS is the ad host, their gaining more of a return on their ads doesn't sound that strange to me. I think the problem some bloggers are having with it is that the numbers used to calculate the bloggers' share are not transparent.

In order to participate in the CBS widget program, you have to blog in a city where CBS is the owner of the local station. Currently, those cities are Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Denver and Chicago. New York is on their list of future launch cities.

CBS is not powering the widget. The widget will be powered by technology provided by Syndigo Networks. To be a part of the new program, you must apply at the CBS web site. If you are approved, you simply install the widget on your blog after getting set up with CBS. Be prepared, word is that the ads themselves are large ads, as much as 300×250 - that is a lot of bog real estate to give up for an iffy return.

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