Digg gives users control over ads
Posted on June 4th, 2009 by Admin in the Articles section
Social news site hopes users and advertisers will dig new ad format, literally.
Leading social news site, Digg, is aiming to do for advertising what they’ve done for news with the introduction of Digg Ads.
Advertising on Digg will take on a new twist once the latest format is out of the pilot stage. Users of the social news site will be introduced to Digg Ads. The ads take on the guise of user-submitted content, and slot nicely into place without jarring, but are clearly marked as sponsored messages.
The twist is that Digg users can vote on the ads - choosing to Digg or Bury them - as with Digg’s usual content. Not only should this format provide site users with more relevant advertising, it can also provide advertisers with real-time feedback on the performance of their messages.
“With Digg Ads, we have two key objectives: to provide advertisers a more effective way to reach consumers, and to provide the voting community of Digg users with a more dynamic, relevant advertising experience,” wrote Mike Maser, Chief Strategy Officer for Digg, on the company blog.
Advertisers will be charged based on the popularity of the ads. The more an ad is Dugg the less the advertiser is charged and the more an ad is Buried the more the advertiser is charged until priced out of the system, explained Maser.
However, as Zee Cane of London-based marketing agency WeDoCreative points out, Digg may have a few stumbling blocks ahead. “Aside from potential competitors burying ads, they’ll need to deal with Apple fan boys who’ll instinctively bury Microsoft ads, marketing agencies who will simply give up in frustration unable to create ads Digg users are satisfied with and all that aside, each ‘ad’ is likely to have to deal with the masses of typical Digg commentary slating every aspect of it and the company behind it,” he wrote on The Next Web Blog.