Digg's ad-voting program brings in cash

Rich Cherecwich
  • Rich Cherecwich
Posted on October 14, 2009

Users of the popular news-aggregating website Digg have always shared funny and interesting advertisements with each other, making it an integral part of viral advertising. But this summer, Digg launched a new program that lets users vote on ads that had actually been paid for, and so far, the response has been great for the company, according to The New York Times.

Digg's ad program operates on the basic premise of the site itself. Advertisers buy ads that are featured in the site's main news feed, and users can vote them up or down. The more votes, or "diggs," an ad gets, the lower the cost-per-click for the advertisers. Ads that are buried by users end up costing advertisers more, meaning the campaign will likely end quickly.

Some of the Digg ads have experienced click-through rates as high as 3 percent, according to the Times, which is far and away an improvement on Digg's average CTR of 0.08 percent.

Digg was dogged by concerns about monetization throughout its early years, creating many parallels to what is happening right now with Twitter. Chief strategy officer Mike Maser told the Times that Digg's next five years will focus on turning a profit.

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Comments

Paul Grusche
Paul Grusche October 15, 2009 at 5:53 AM

What continually surprises me is that most new ad formats are really good at rewarding clients who can afford great creative and might already be popular with consumers (Amazon, Toyota). While the companies trying to make it get voted down (buried) and pay more for the experience.

The voting mechanism may improve the overall ad experience but it still doesn't solve the problem of creating viewer incentive to engage with the ad. For that you need a value-exchange ad format because the majority of people ignore ads while a select few will think it's novel to vote.

Additionally, to think that advertisers now have a new tool to gauge the effectiveness of their ad and help them improve creative is a stretch. A vote up or down doesn't tell them what worked or needs to be changed any more than traditional metrics already used to track the ad. Sometimes the most effective creative might not be the prettiest or most popular. With this system, the advertiser may lose sight of that.

By building value into the ad format itself instead of the creative, the advertiser is guaranteed attention. Then, they can finally focus on the message, not on the reason to get you to watch the ad in the first place.

That being said, I do applaud the effort and think anything that can triple revenue forecasts is brilliant.

Paul Grusche
Ultramercial