DMNews has an interview with Chris Johnson, VP of content & biz dev at Hearst Digital Media, on how widgets drive web readership.  It is a worthwhile read.

He says, at Hearst, that they monitor conversion rate of views vs referrals, measuring referrals "as a click on somebody else's site that drives them to our site."

For reference, Editor's Desk, (NewsGator's widget creation and management system) allows you to track descendants (all sites that have taken the widget to their site using the "get this" function); impressions, click-throughs, as well as other interactions, and more.

Also, look for some NewsGator-specific news coming out of DMNews next week!