14 DAY TRIAL // Two months ago social link sharing aggregator Digg announced an interesting and potentially risky move with a new type of ads that would show up in the regular stream and – the best part – which users will get to “digg” or “bury” depending on how good they are. Called Digg Ads, they're ready to launch and will be rolling out in beta for some users this week.
“As announced earlier this summer, I’m excited to let you all know that we’re rolling out an early beta version of Digg Ads,” Mike Maser, chief strategy officer at Digg, wrote on the company's blog. “Over the next few days, some of you will see Digg Ads appear in rotation in various placements throughout Digg. The ads will look and feel similar to the Digg content you see everyday - stories, video trailers, independent product reviews – but will be clearly marked as sponsored.”
The ads were first revealed in June and started popping up for some users last month. At the time, the ads were only part of an internal test that was somehow made public but the testing period is over and the time has come to set them loose on the Digg site. Advertisers will be able to buy ad spots on the site, which will then show up among the regular entries, though distinguishable from the regular content. Users will then have the opportunity to vote on them, digging the ones they enjoy and burying the ones that don't work.
While this may seem like an obvious advantage for users, advertisers may be harder to convince so Digg has also implemented a system where they charge less for the ads that get more diggs, though with more positive votes they'll also get more views so, overall, Digg will still be bringing in more money. At the same time, ads that get buried will become so expensive that they'll be effectively driven out of the system.
That's the theory anyway, but it might just be that users will automatically bury any ads leading the project to utter failure. Still, this only serves to put more pressure on the advertisers to come up with ads people will actually like and even share, which, at the end of the day, benefits everyone. The ads are being launched for a small subset of Digg users for now, with plans to gradually introduce the feature to everyone in the coming months.