Sometimes it seems like this “how do we do online ads” problem doesn’t have a solution. We don’t click them, we’re annoyed when they take over our favorite sites and they confuse us when they’re mixed in with editorial. Digg’s latest attempt at user-ad-interaction is interesting and simple and we think you should know about it.
The site used to use Microsoft’s ad platform, but this week unveiled Digg Ads, a system that places banners among the lists of content. Nothing new there. However, they applied the same rating system that has made their site so popular to their ads. Now you can Digg or Bury ads — the more liked these pieces are, the higher they land, and so on.
From the Digg blog, “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.”
The ad content will be marked as sponsored and, “[t]he goal here is to give advertisers a way to present content related to their brands and get immediate input on whether it’s relevant to the Digg audience, or not.”
The system sort of flips traditional placement on its head: rather than paying up front, an advertiser will wait until the info is rated. Good for readers, cheap for advertiser, maybe bad for Digg. Then again if a piece takes off, everyone wins.
Let’s see what happens. Via