Digging Adverts

News-sharing site Digg.com has released a new advertising platform called Digg Ads to help monetise its enormous traffic, PoynterOnline reports.

The user-focused ad model rewards advertisers with products and adverts that users might actually enjoy.

"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," explained Digg's Mike Maser on the company's blog.

He said the goal was "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."

"Audiences don't hate ads, they hate mindless ads," said Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, a Chicago-based design agency that reports success with its own user-experience-based ad network. "We turn down more ads than we take. We've been sold out for two years."

Poynter's Will Sullivan points out that the strategy "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."