By this time, the web is probably dilluted with all sorts of news bits, blog posts and what-have-yous on the most controversial press release for this week. The headlines says it all – Digg and Microsoft reached an advertising deal. Some headlines framed it in a more controversial way such as – Digg Ditches Google over Microsoft in Advertising deal.
Digg hasn’t made a formal announcement yet, except for Kevin Ross’ post on Digg’s blog, clearly a ploy so as not to over sensationalize the matter.
But the Microsoft press release issued today more than compensate for the lack of official annoucement from Digg. Putting it simply, the deal is your usual advertising placement deal between two companies, a social bookmarking site and a major IT player. So what’s the big fuzz all about? Not because of Microsoft getting the Digg advertising rights or Digg getting Microsoft to place contextual and link advertisement on Digg’s site. But rather because of the question that is more for Digg to answer, why not Google?
Of course, we would never get a clear answer to that coming Digg. The best we could have regarding this issue coming Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson is that:
As the Digg audience continues to grow and diversify, we believe that this initiative with Microsoft, and the resources that it provides, will enable us to focus less on developing an advertising infrastructure and more on developing new and innovative features for the site.
But then, we all know that this is more of a “for-press-release-purpose” statement. Something that is for public consumption. If you want to take it as is, you have every right to do so. As for me, I still believe that there is a bigger reason on Digg’s part for such deal. Something that has to do with which is the bigger and hotter company, the client or the service provider.Go figure.
I am sure Digg will get better returns by displaying adcenter ads. Google adwords sucks and it pays you as low as 0.01 for some clicks. Ofcourse the rate for digg wud hav been better but again, google is not playing the game right. If this goes on, it is going to loose grounds as fast as it gained it. Too much greed is not very good. Yahoo can bcome a market leader in PPC.. if only it made the rules easier and started accepting international customers.
I’m sure digg accepted the best offer. MSN is a major underdog in online advertising so they likely are breaking even (at best) on this deal.
Mukesh – The question is whether Microsoft advertisers are more than enough to be serviced on Digg and whether those advertisers would serve ads relevant to what Digg is all about – a hip, trendy social portal that it wants it to be.
1068844 – point well said. exactly the answer that I had in mind when I posted the question. the contract is for 3 years I believe.
CVOSSEO – MSN, being an underdog in the online advertising industry could probably the reason why Digg chose it to serve online ads to the site.
Honestly, I’m not a big fan of Digg, Kevin and Jay but writing this piece and digging into the mad Digg spectrum and speculating about the reason for the Microsoft is slowly turning me into a Digg convert.
I’m sure the extremely low CTRs where a major reason for the switch. Also, like breifly mentioned, Digg gets some nice PR from the switch.
Generally these things (the deals) are done because they’re a good deal for both parties. In this case, Microsoft gets the traffic and visibility and Digg is obviously going to make more than they’re making now with running Google’s ads.
Broke away from their reliance on Federated Media. Too communal I would guess.
They are growing up.
Well for people who don’t like MS and were going to digg for foss/linux news there is http://www.fsdaily.com – a digg style site just for foss news
I don’t think I want to click on Digg ads anymore now.