The issue surrounding widgets, as it relates to advertising, is they aren't being measured on the web in any comprehensive way. That may soon change though as comScore starts to include Facebook in its tracking of widgets.
Up to now they haven't done it because they only measured Flash-based applications, while ignoring the widgets built on Facebook, which are based on Javascript. Of course that was the fault of Facebook for not allowing Flash to be automatically loaded on their network.
Now with both these two major ways of developing widgets being measured, it should give a much better snapshot of how much their being interacted with by users.
All of this underscores the problems, in spite of the hype, of monetizing social networks. While doing this will be good as far as understanding the value of widgets, it doesn't deal with the more important problem of content on the networks not suitable to put advertising against.
Measuring widgets will be good for those you make them, as they can start making some money off them, but I'm not sure it'll too much difference for advertisers looking to put their advertising next to safe content. Until that happens, social networks will continue to be potential that is not realized. They only cater to a very narrow type of user at this time. That will probably change as new networks are developed with both users and advertisers in mind.
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