We are all looking for new ways to make our online marketing message more relevant.  One way to do this is to project our message in a format that is natural to the user. Our partners at Digg.com have created a couple of great new approaches with “Digg Content Ads” and “DiggAds”.  Both solutions deliver your message in a format that is native to the Digg experience. 

Digg Content Ads UK

In summary, Digg Content Ads are basically widgets that contain previous Digg homepage stories that are relevant to the industry or company that is advertising on Digg. For example, Symantec has been testing the model with banners that pull in popular security-technology stories from the Digg archive.  The aim is to encourage advertisers to re-aggregate stories that have already been popular on Digg. The stories might be about a brand’s products or services, or they might be stories of general interest to that brand’s customers.

It’s important to point out that advertisers cannot promote stories that haven’t already been promoted to Digg’s homepage organically. However, if the stories have passed the age of promotion eligibility, they may be featured in a content ad even if they were never promoted. In other words, Digg Content Ads allow advertisers to re-publish existing stories into ad positions on Digg.com, and to give those stories additional exposure within paid media; but they can’t use this approach to artificially boost a story onto Digg’s homepage.

DiggAds UK

How it works: user Diggs, buries and clicks influence a quality score that determines how often an ad gets displayed, and ultimately how much the advertiser pays per click. The more users Digg an ad, the less the advertiser will have to pay; the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, eventually pricing it out of the system. The goal with Digg Ads is to encourage advertisers to create content as compelling as organic Digg stories, and to give users more control over which ads you see on Digg.

The ads will look and feel similar to the Digg content you see everyday - stories, video trailers, independent product reviews – but will be clearly marked as sponsored.

NOTE: That at the time of writing this blog post, DiggAds are not geo-targetable.  We expect to offer geo-targeting in the very near future.

These pioneering ad formats are work in progress, which have so far seen great success.  Importantly, they will iterate based on feedback from the Digg community, which ultimately drives the site.

To find out more about these innovative advertising formats in the United Kingdom, please contact our sales team.