FAQ

General

Q: What is Gigya?

A: Gigya provides widget creators with our simple Wildfire tools to help distribute, track and monetize widgets across social networks and blogs. Our tools will help increase the viral distribution of your content. Gigya's tools are fully customizable, free and easy to integrate within any web page.

Q: What does Gigya do?

A: Gigya's content sharing and advertising platform helps publishers and advertisers increase reach and engagement, distributing widgets to any platform and providing powerful social features to any website. Gigya's Wildfire technology helps widget publishers, distribute, track and monetize their content. Gigya Socialize gives website owners the ability to grow both traffic and engagement by adding social features.

Q: Are your products really free?

A: Yes! Gigya distribution and tracking tools are free. We do not charge a premium for any of our tools.

Q: If all of this is free, then how does Gigya make money?

A: We offer several monetization opportunities for publishing partners and those who choose to utilize these features will share a portion of these revenues with Gigya. Our innovative widget promotion technique does not displace any current advertising real estate on your page, so all revenues earned are completely incremental. If you are interested in becoming one of our partners, contact us at partners@gigya-inc.com

Q: Who are Gigya's others advertisers, publishers and partners?

A: Gigya works with a variety of entertainment, CPG, automotive and other Fortune 500 advertisers and agencies, including Toyota, Avenue A, Saatchi, ComedyCentral, MTV, Sprint, Nike and Levis. Our publishers include such companies as EA and RockYou. We work with more than 500 of these publishers and advertisers to accelerate distribution of their content. Gigya partners also include rich media companies like EyeWonder and Doubleclick -- our Wildfire technology enables installation of their rich media ad units to social networks and other social platforms.

Q: Can Gigya help my advertiser target a particular online market?

A: Yes, the broad range of sites in our network allow us to promote your widget on sites with a significant composition of your target audience. The great thing about a pay-per-install model is that by default advertisers are reaching and paying only for those who are interested in the content they are presenting.

Q: Are your tracking tools proprietary? Do you integrate with other analytics solutions?

A: Our technology is proprietary; however we provide both a web-based reporting system, export to excel functionality, and an API for those who wish to integrate with other systems.

Q: Who is backing Gigya?

A: Gigya is venture-backed by Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital and Mayfield Fund.

Distribution Ad Network & Wildfire

Q: What's Wildfire?

A: Wildfire is Gigya's proprietary technology that enables widget content to be quickly and easily installed to a user's social network profile page, blog, favorite bookmarking site, or their desktop. The technology is used by more than 400 of the top widget publishers, including RockYou, SnapVine and Webshots, as well as a growing roster of advertisers, and enables rich-media companies like EyeWonder and DoubleClick, making it easier for their users to grab or share their content. The technology also provides a web-based reporting system and API, measuring widget installs, distribution by social network, viral sharing patterns, and interactions specific to each widget's features and functionality.

Q: What does Wildfire have to do with the ad network?

A: Wildfire is the technology infrastructure on which the ad network is built, a technology that is harnessing the power of the huge number of widget content publishers. A select group of the 400+ widget publishers who are using Gigya's free Wildfire technology on their sites have also chosen to generate incremental revenue by joining the Gigya Ad Network. When a user clicks on the Wildfire interface to install a publisher's widget to their social network profile that same interface also presents the user with an offer to install the Advertiser's widget as well.

Q: What is a widget and why do I need one?

A: A widget is any piece of content or code that can be embedded in a web page. We believe widgets are the next generation brand ad-unit for several reasons:

They are user-endorsed, as users actively choose to install them, so advertisers must truly create value for consumers. As a result, advertisers are able to individualize outreach and create a two-way communication channel with their target audience.
They have incredible rich media functionality that an advertiser can leverage to encourage the user to interact with their brand in innovative ways.
They can leverage all the social sharing features of the social networks to which they are installed, as well as others that Gigya provides, making the opportunity for exposure
For this reason we provide a full-service solution for using Widgets in what we believe is the most impactful way, from content development, to hosting to distribution and reporting.

Q: What kind of widget can be promoted on your network?

A: Any kind of widget will work. We even create a dedicated Facebook application for each of our ad network advertisers free of charge so that they can take advantage of all the great sharing features that Facebook provides.

Q: How do Gigya and its widget distribution network differ from competitors?

A: We differ in several key ways:

Gigya has the ability to guarantee distribution of an advertiser-specific widget to a large and relevant audience on a massive scale – up to tens of thousands of installs per day – effectively seeding a viral campaign. With the Gigya ad network, advertisers can buy widget installs with a specific budget and flight dates like any other online advertising inventory.
Gigya is platform-agnostic – so even if an advertiser has built a widget on another company's widget platform, it is still a great candidate for running on the Gigya network to increase distribution.
Gigya is destination-agnostic – we can install an advertiser's widget to any social network, blog, bookmarking site or desktop – including MySpace and Facebook.

Q: Do you provide advertisers with a distribution list?

A: Yes, we are totally transparent for advertisers and can provide a list of sites on which their widget will be offered to users.

Q: How do I track this kind of campaign?

A: Gigya provides a real-time web-based reporting system, as well as APIs for integration into an existing ad tracking system.

Q: Do you reach Facebook users?

A: Yes. We have three great features for reaching Facebook users

Our publisher network includes Facebook applications
Our Wildfire quick-install technology allows anyone to quickly install your widget to their Facebook profile from any site
We create a dedicated Facebook application for all advertiser widget campaigns running on our network.

Gigya Socialize

Q: What is Gigya Socialize?

A: Gigya Socialize is a service that brings the most popular features and functionality of social networks like Facebook and MySpace to your website. The service allows users to discover your site’s content and share it with their friends. The social graph can be incorporated into a site’s user experience in a variety of creative ways, and some of the most popular include:

Invite: Users invite their friends to join them on your site
Share: Users share your content, e.g. articles, video clips or images, with multiple friends
Newsfeed: Users gain new ways to discover and explore your site

Q: What are the benefits of adding social functionality to my website?

A: Through features like Newsfeed, users will be able to experience your website with their friends, making the experience more interactive and engaging, and increasing loyalty. In addition, users will invite friends to join them, creating a viral effect that increases traffic to your site.

Q: What kinds of sites can use Gigya Socialize?

A: Almost any site with content can use Gigya Socialize. For example, news sites, entertainment sites, sites with a large user base, or any site with extensive content where insight from friends can enhance the user experience.

Q: How does Gigya Socialize access a user’s social graph?

A: Gigya Socialize can create a user’s social graph or import an existing graph. Gigya Socialize creates a user’s social graph by asking site visitors’ permission to import their webmail contacts, and then directing them to select and invite their friends. The process is 100% opt-in, and friends must be confirmed so that all relationships and interactions are mutual. Gigya Socialize will also access existing social graphs from social networks that provide the APIs to do so.

Q: What is involved in implementing Gigya Socialize?

A: Implementation is relatively fast and straightforward. Gigya offers two options for incorporating the functionality: 1) Open API – giving direct access to Gigya Socialize and providing full flexibility in implementation. In the API, Gigya provides a list of commands that a site developer can incorporate into relevant pages to launch each function. 2) Ready-made components – Gigya has created plug and play components for the most popular features. These components can be easily customized to fit with the site’s existing design.

Q: How can I compare API and Component implementations?

A: In both implementations, the social activity happens within your website. When users create their friends list for the first time it will be handled through a dialog box that appears on top of the site. With an API implementation, outside of the social graph building process, you are in complete control of the user experience. For example, using the command for Newsfeed, a site can call the Gigya servers for the relevant information which can then be displayed anywhere on the site and in any form. To have the same functionality with a component-based implementation, the partner can grab a ready-made piece of code which brings back a predefined Newsfeed unit which the developer can place on the page in the desired location, and then customize with the site’s look and feel.

Q: Do you charge for this product?

A: The technology is available free of charge. In the future, Gigya will offer sites the opportunity to work with Gigya to generate incremental revenue from the product and participation will be on an opt-in basis. Partners that choose not to participate will continue to enjoy the service.

Q: What level of implementation support do you provide?

A: Gigya offers comprehensive technical support – by phone or email – to answer your questions about implementation of the service on your website. In addition, we provide full documentation to allow for easy and seamless integration with your current website.

Q: Why did Gigya decide to develop Gigya Socialize?

A: Gigya Socialize is a natural addition given Gigya’s position as the leading infrastructure for content sharing on the web. Our original technology product brings content to the social networks (and other sites), and with this new product Gigya is now bringing social networking to content sites. With our technology reaching more than 120 million unique widget and social network users, and tracking billions of impressions each month, we have the experience and scale to deliver these new features successfully.