Apparently, not only is Digg feeling the need for speed, but it’s feeling the need to make money too. And that’s good because this new idea is rather interesting.
Digg is testing a new type of advertisement on its site that basically surfaces old content submitted to Digg that is relevant to certain advertisers. So, as you can see in the example below, if Norton wants to advertise its new security software, it can find a few old Digg items related to Internet security and put them in the ad box along with their banner. This not only advertises their product, but gives users something potentially useful to click on.
The whole ad area is sponsored by the advertising company, but it’s not clear if clicking on one of the Digg stories in the ad space takes you to that actual story, and more importantly, if the advertiser is actually paying for all of those clicks. If so, that seems like a great deal for Digg. Regardless, this seems like a good way to build brand awareness through content that Digg users have already found useful by themselves.
One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is that while Digg is full of interesting information, the lifespan of that information is very short. Once a story disappears from the homepage, the liklihood that anyone is going to see it again is very small. Digg has some methods to surface really popular items again, such as the “Top In” areas, but there’s plenty of information that is not a top item on Digg for whatever reason, but would still be interesting to some users to see again. This is one potential way of surfacing such information and making money for doing it.
Digg notes that only a small percentage of users will see these ads for now. These are not the same as its Digg Ads platform, which asks users to vote on actual advertisements.
It’s also worth noting that advertisers are not allowed to submit their own content to use in these ads. Any content used has to have been already submitted to Digg, though it doesn’t necessarily have had to have been on the homepage.
[photo: TriStar pictures]
I really like the things that Digg has been focusing on lately in order to drive success.
1) The user : make them happy with quality features
2) Engagement : love or hate it, the Digg bar statistically shows higher engagement levels
3)Relevancy : by creating more innovative ways to deliver content, they have also found ways to deliver relelvant advertising (which provides huge value and therefore a better ROI for advertisers)
Digg is one of the few web companies that understands these 3 steps and seems to able to capitalize on their advantages.
Problem is most Digg users are power users with AdBlock Plus which filters out all those ads.
This was something which was behind the clouds since quite a while…..
is that a poem?
MG
Is today tom cruise day?
when is it not tom cruise day?
This was something
which was behind the clouds
since quite a while…
Is today tom cruise day?
when is it not tom cruise day?
reply
now, That’s a poem!
That’s too much Tom Cruise for me in one day.
you just wish i had used Far & Away, don’t you?
LOL MG. U seem to be going on full blast today
I seriously don’t understand how you could NOT use Top Gun in every picture.
It’s like using Keanu Reeves, and not using Point Break.
I think this is one of the best advertisement idea to come along in a while. Relevant content linked to an ad.By seeing the number of Diggs beside the story, you can if the content was popular or not. I don’t see any downside to this.
Will they share the revenue with the writer of that content… even google ask before using people’s content to put ads on…
This is a great idea – I noticed it on Digg a few days ago.
I like this feature, most of these articles don’t last much beyond 24hours, nice to see them seeing the light of day again.
While they may catch some flak for this I think this is interesting. Hope it works.
Old content on Digg is like re-broadcasting old TV shows.
Which movie is this snap shot from. Can’t recall. Anyone?
“show me the money”
http://www.yout...h?v=OaiSHcHM0PA
LOL…. Why you people are looking sooo annoyed???? Take it easy … Just imagine how it would be if Facebook and Digg go down?????
Makes sense. Sounds a lot like the sponsored entries in StumbleUpon.