Digg's new advertising system, the one that changes how much advertisers have to pay based on how popular their ads are, is going live in the next few days. A new company blog post says that the new system will be very limited in its scale, both in how many advertisers are a part of the pilot program, and how many ads are being placed around the site. So much so that "many (users) will not see them."
If all goes according to plan, these new ads could one day take the place of Digg's existing and traditional advertising, which uses ads that are sold at a fixed price. The newer system relies on user interaction to adjust the price according to how many up or down votes an ad has. The more people like the ad, the less the advertiser has to pay, with the lame ones having a limited run and a higher cost.
When I first heard about this system I was skeptical, since the ads looked and acted so much like existing on-page Digg content. But at the same time, it means that advertisers are going to have to work much, much harder to get user attention in a way that's tailored to the audience. For Digg users this means they get control not only of the stories that are hitting the front page, but also the ads that appear on it.
Here's what it will look like:
