Digg users express (justifiable?) concern over site’s front page ads.

Popular social news site Digg.com targeted its tech-savvy, mostly left-wing,sensationalism-devouring audience and repeatedly bombarded them with a Dragon Age: Origins-riddled front page. Almost no corner of the site remained untouched by the Bioware-developed and Eletronic Arts-published videogame. A site width-equivalent banner brightened the Digg sky, another rested in the upper-right quadrant (below relevant site articles featuring the title), and, sitting incognito among the up-and-coming new items on the left-center,  a sponsored item lie in wait, ready to pounce on an unsuspecting reader not privvy to new age marketing techniques. The ad looked like any other news story, and users could even promote it with a Digg, but the thin black line encasing the item, complete with squint-or-you’ll-miss-it “sponsored by…” text, indicated presence was not earned through the site’s typical user-submitted and user-endorsed foundations.

Users felt betrayed by their site; their internet communal home to which they contributed content and maintained through Digging the articles of others. “I helped build this and now a part of it is mine!” they might’ve thought, despite never paying a dime to upkeep the site and pay for an eventual expansion. The opportunity to comment and become an identifiable Digg “star” for submitting popular articles only ensured a pervasive deep-seated sense of ownership.

This “for us and exclusively by us” mentality held by the privileged and informed internet power user clique doesn’t pay Digg’s multi-million dollar bills. According to a December 18, 2008 report from BusinessWeek, the 2004 internet start-up from founder Kevin Rose lost $4 million on $6.4 million of revenue in the first three quarters of 2008. The business model needed to change, and Chief Executive Officer Jay Adelson knew it. On December 2 of the same year, a few weeks prior to the BusinessWeek article, Adelson announced the site was no longer for sale, and that it would shift its focus to “building an independent business that reaches profitability as quickly as possible.” As we all know, one way to boost revenue is by selling more adspace, and that’s what Digg’s doing.

But at what cost? Chas Edwards, Chief Revenue Officer at Digg updated his blog with a post called “EA’s Dragon Age: Content and Ads Working Well Together” and wrote: ” EA is promoting Dragon Age on Digg with Digg Ads units on the homepage. At the same time, reviews of Dragon Age (this one from Joystiq) are also making their way to Digg’s homepage organically, based on votes by Digg readers.” Below the aforementioned text he added this picture (below).

Finally, Chas commented ” I love it when this happens. You know you’re serving relevant ads to an audience when that audience votes up the brand or product on its own,” and disclosed his employment with Digg.

Chas may be right in his observance of the ad relevancy, but...

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