Digg.com, the juggernaut social news sharing site, has released a new advertising platform called Digg Ads to help monetize its
server-melting traffic.
Digg's Mike Maser announced the
new ad feature on the company's blog, saying: "Digg Ads will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system."
This move is an interesting user-focused ad model, rewarding advertisers with products and ads that users might actually enjoy.
"Audiences don't hate ads, they hate mindless ads," Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners said at the May
SND Chicago meetup. "We turn down more ads than we take. We've been sold out for two years. We only take ads for products that we respect."
It seems to be the polar opposite of what some newspaper Web sites frequently do, accepting any and all ads, often using untargeted
remnant advertising with silhouettes of women dancing around neon, flashing text advertising insurance. These often only pay pennies and cost publishers in the long run by offering a poor user experience.
