As announced earlier this summer, I’m excited to let you all know that we’re rolling out an early beta version of Digg Ads.

A recap of how it works: your Diggs, buries and clicks influence a quality score that determines how often the ad gets displayed, and ultimately how much the advertiser pays per click. The more you 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 success of this system depends on your participation and feedback, as it will help advertisers to create the best possible experience for the Digg community. Our goal with Digg Ads is to encourage advertisers to create content as compelling as organic Digg stories, and to give you more control over which ads you see on Digg.

Over the next few days, some of you will see Digg Ads appear in rotation in various placements throughout 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.

We’re rolling Digg Ads out initially to small sets of users to help us test the product, so in the early stages many of you will not see them. We will continually iterate the product based on input from the community and our advertising partners. These changes will be rolled out over the course of the next several months, so expect to hear from us frequently on this topic as we work to create more compelling and innovative ads on Digg.

Thanks,
Mike