The fundamental problem with advertising is that it has always taken the shotgun approach. Show the same ad to as many people as possible and hope some of them like it. Systems like Google AdSense have improved things a lot by showing ads related to the content on a web-page but they are still not ideal and give the person who owns the web-page minimal control beyond some simple competitor-exclusions.

In the past few years the whole area of widgets has been growing at a phenomenal rate. There is a widget for displaying almost anything at this stage. Now imagine if you had a widget where you defined the ad content and it was for products you like? Imagine if you got paid every time one of those ads resulted in a sale?

Well that’s what Nooked has built. For example, if you are a Birkenstock fanatic, you can choose to just display ads for those on your blog, social network or other web-page. Select the products you like and you are up and running in minutes.

The big advantage for you as a “publisher” is that you display products you recommend and the likelihood is that those who read your blog or are connected to you on a social network will also find them interesting. The advantage for advertisers is that it is much much more targetted than even AdSense because it is focused on people and their interests instead of just content.

The Nooked guys have a great blog post pointing out some of the history of sell-side advertising. Why not head on over to their site and grab a widget showing the things you like?