Grid. Where The Monetizable Clicks Are: Digg’s New Ads. Last week, we wrote about Digg testing a new kind of ad that allowed sponsors to find previously submitted Digg content and and wrap it in their own ad unit.
The first such ad just went live for everyone this morning. And it seems like a really great idea. Since I wasn’t able to see the ads before, I wondered if the actual Digg content portion of the ad would link back to the sponsor or to the actual story. Not only does it link back to the story’s permalink page, but it routes it through a DoubleClick referral. So yes, Digg is keeping track of all of these clicks (though I’m told that right now the ads are on a CPM basis), while users are being sent to content that quite likely do actually want to go to. As you can see in the first such ad, for the new Warner Brothers film Where The Wild Things Are, the movie studio picked three previously popular stories on Digg about the movie. Naturally, the ad unit also features a big graphic for the film as well. Digg’s Vote-for-Ads Experiment Is Raising Revenue - Bits Blog - When the social news site Digg introduced sponsored links into its main news flow this summer, the company knew it was taking a gamble.
Would the notoriously rambunctious community revolt or boycott the site for cluttering up its news feed with advertisements? “The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Mike Maser, chief strategy officer, during a recent visit to The New York Times. The experimental advertising platform, which began a measured introduction at Digg.com in August, incorporates the same social voting principles as the news site, allowing users to vote for the ads they like and against the ones they don’t. Screen shot of a Digg sponsored link. “We wanted to give users the choice to decide what they wanted to see,” Mr. The company, which said its Web site receives around 40 million unique visitors each month, considers the campaign its first step in a broader move toward increasing revenue.
Part of that strategy means finding a more innovative path to profitability. Digg Cuts Staff, Focuses on Profitability. In a sign that the economy is impacting even the most successful of startups, Digg has announced that it’s reducing staff and focusing on becoming profitable.
While Digg is cutting a rumored 10% of its current staff, they are also hiring a direct sales team to try and beef up revenue. CEO Jay Adelson notes that company priorities now include, “building on our advertising infrastructure, our successful partnership with Microsoft, and ongoing sponsorship opportunities.” BusinessWeek recently disclosed that Digg’s revenue was just $4.8 million in 2007, and through the first three quarters of 2008, $6.4 million. While big numbers by most Web startup standards, considering that Digg reaches more than 30 million people each month, they are hardly inspiring. Although Digg is yet to turn a profit, the company still has plenty of cash on-hand. Did Twitter Just Pass Digg? According to Hitwise, last week visits to Twitter surpassed visits to Digg for the first time.
Hitwise measures visits in terms of “market share,” which isn’t a very helpful metric (both have 0.021 percent market share, but Twitter is ranked No. 84 and Digg is No. 85). This data is of last week, when visits to Twitter surged following the much-Tweeted emergency landing of a plane on the Hudson. (Note that these numbers do not include usage on mobile devices, desktop apps, or through other Websites via Twitter’s API).
Today, traffic to Twitter was even higher with everybody feeling compelled to let everyone else know that, yes, in fact, the U.S. has a new president and that they saw his inauguration speech. (You too?) For what it’s worth, Google Trends for Websites also shows Twitter catching up to Digg (but not yet passing). Google Walks Away From Digg Deal. The Google/Digg acquisition negotiations were in full swing as of last Tuesday, had passed the term sheet stage and the two companies were in final negotiations in the $200 million range. But sometime this last week Google decided to walk from the deal. Digg was notified on late Thursday or Friday. Google was in the due diligence stage of the deal, where they peer deep into Digg’s technology and financial statements.
Most term sheets are non binding, so anything that gives the buyer pause can be used as an excuse to walk away – but generally the buyer already has a very good idea what they are getting well before the term sheet stage. Two sources close to the companies suggested that some issue that came up during technical due diligence was to blame. Dipity’s Archaeologist Provides Timeline of Digg Articles for an.