Executive Summary: Host more of each submitted story on Digg and link to these story pages from Digg.com, just like Huffington Post and Alley Insider does. Blackball publishers who protest. Target ads based on story content, section and user profile data.Entrant: Alex Schleber
1. Take away the direct outbound links on the front page, those make it so that most visitors will only see 1-2 ads if they click away to the story, etc. Also note that the outbound link is the large blue link jumping off the page, while the interior "more" link, which can then show more ads, almost disappears in the design.
2. Somewhat related to 1), the description/quote/excerpt content for each item needs to be of sufficient length to warrant clicking through to the "full" posting, similar to the way a teaser is used on a blog (like AlleyInsider) index page in the river, and the larger post only appears on the interior page. While it is true that Digg is more of a social bookmarking tool than a blog, nothing says that they cannot use slighltly enhanced/stricter standards on items selected for the home page, in order to shore up their page views.
In truth, a handier bookmarklet (a la Tumblr) or other automated forms of grabbing a little more (but not too much) content, say 1-2 paragraphs worth, to quote would be a good thing as well, as nobody wants to have to write a medium sized blog post just to post a bookmark to Digg. And if some content producer doesn't like it and wants to complain about free publicity from Digg, they can be taken down in a cinch and be blacklisted (I know AlleyInsider wouldn't complain... :).
3. Most inportantly, none of this will matter if they cannot get the context for the ads right. I have been saying this in regard to many an ad placement problem on social media and media sharing sites: You have to get the context right, especially since ads in a social context are already mostly perceived as an interruption/nuisance, if not as an outright violation of social trust.
You have to add value with the ad, such that it is more perceived as a friendly service. E.g. I clicked on a "more" link for an item on sleep deprivation/disorders, and the banner and other display ads were for AudioBooks (of general topic, NOT about SLEEP stuff), as well as ThinkNews (think.mtv.com), which are both sufficiently off the mark to lead to a very low clickt-hrough, and thus likely a very poor CPM or CPC revenue for Digg.
Which is truly heinous, since Digg of all places really has something to go by via the story content, not completely dissimilar to a keyword search on Google. If someone by viewing a story says, I am interested in the sleep disorder thing, at least show them an ad for sleep related products or services for crying out loud, not for cars or perfume...
4. Digg also has all of its categories, which should be possible to target ads toward, and if I were them I'd likely add even more nichey sub-categories, which could be used to target ads even better. Again, provided they make it so that clicking through to the underlying link first requires clicking through to Digg's interior item page.
(Oh yeah, related to 3), under the "General Sciences" category I was served an ad for "Disney Video Club - 4 Childrens Movies for the price of 1"... Q.E.D.)
5. When logged in, Digg should try to derive from the users submissions/Diggs/Profile what ads to show, and it should use recency via e.g. a weighted "theme aggregate" in Submissions/Diggs as a criterion as well in doing this.
This matched with the category/subcategory of the story should provide plenty of relevant targeting that would show ads people might actually enjoy for a change, e.g. a discounted subscription to a "personal finance tricks" newsmag served alongside a story that reads "Frugality is cool in the cash-strapped US", asf.
As I said, break of context in SOCIAL contexts can be a massive deal braker, since social trust is violated. This needs to be handled extremly well and with tact, which is why ad serves on all manner of social sites have been doing so poorly. I wrote a post not too long ago about the dynamics of this, tying in material from Behavioral Economics on "The Cost of Social Norms":
