Browser Add-Ons an Emerging Force - Page 2

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So far, he said user feedback is high and the click through rate (clicking to see full screen versions of these ads) is relatively high at seven percent.

Jeremy Liew, a venture capitalist with Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated the conference's opening panel. Liew said add-ons offer developers a ubiquitous relationship with users. "They go wherever the user is on the Web, and it's a great opportunity to collect data," he said.

For companies like OneRiot, that's important because the it offers a "social" search engine, available as a toolbar for either Firefox or IE, that provides results influenced by where its community surfs on the Web. "At the end of the day, we want targeted data and people who are going to use that data," said Kimbal Musk, CEO of OneRiot.

Distribution is key to success. "If you can find something to get Webmasters to promote your service, that's a great method of distribution," said Geoff Mack, product manager at Alexa.

Alex Iskold, CEO of Adaptive Blue, said the Mozilla Add-on site has been "a great channel" for distribution, generating over two million downloads. The company offers a range of browser utility services based on semantic Web technology. Its latest, Glue, offers a way to connect with friends while surfing. The "Glue bar" shows you friends who looked at the same thing and their comments.

Iskold said AdaptiveBlue is very transparent about telling people what information it collects. It's also only active on the few sites where it's meaningful to the user, where common interests like books or movies might be the focus. "There is a right way to connect people around their interests and we want to be careful to facilitate that in the right way," he said.

Don't oversell

Some panelists warned toolbars and other add-ons can be too intrusive. Adam Boyden, president of Conduit, which offers custom toolbars for such clients as Major League Baseball, said there is tremendous demand among publishers to find better content for their toolbars. But they have to offer clear utility. Conduit offers a network of components that can be added to toolbars.

"Some publishers have had disastrous results because they were overly enthusiastic in marketing their brand and ended up with a very high churn rate," he said. While he wouldn't talk about specific ad or license revenue, Boyden said Conduit hasn't touched any of the $8 million it raised and has 65 employees.