Can Marketers Produce Digg-worthy Content?
That’s the unknown, according to the Ad Age article on Digg’s new Digg Ads (press round up here The Thief Lord release ).
“The question is whether the famously fickle and opinionated Digg community will accept Digg Ads or vote them off the island. In an e-mail interview, Mr. Rose, 32, told Ad Age he’s got faith in advertisers’ ability to produce Diggable content. “
I agree with my new colleague Mr Rose, who points out the Digg community has been Digging (and burying) marketer-created content for years:
“People are already doing this on Digg with all kinds of commercial content. There are tons of examples, like the recent Intel ‘Rock Stars’ TV ad that got more than 1,500 Diggs. I think our audience is OK with the idea of advertising when it’s relevant or useful or interesting. So it’s happening already, but our goal is to give the Digg community a degree of control over the advertising they like and don’t like. It’s a logical progression for a community like ours and we think it represents a form of advertising that is a little more in sync with what people are coming to Digg to do anyway.”
Hey Chaz, I’ve been following this story closely and wanted to get in touch with you with a simple question:
What if Digg community members made the ads?
They understand the community — what works, what doesn’t, the sensibilities. You could argue that the endemic publisher-audience-advertiser relationship is already driven by the Digg community. They are both audience and publishers.
Why not engage them as the advertisers (or advertising creators) as well?
If that sounds compelling, let me know. Even if it sounds worth a short call / email.
We’ve got a number of deals in action already to help very active communities engage in better ways with their advertisers. I can see how Digg’s voting components can work perfectly to extend those models.
~James
James–
One step at a time!
In fact, the Digg community will shape and improve the ads, even if they don’t (for now) create them. In order to succeed at capturing the community’s attention, advertisers will need to learn what products and product features appeal to Diggers — and they’ll need to write ad copy and headlines in the colloquial language that’s native to Digg.