Digg has plans to roll out a new ad format that they are calling “Social Ads.” The new format looks very similar to regular user submitted stories and can be voted up or down by users. The move comes at a time when many voices in the online advertising industry are talking about the abysmal performance of display advertising, especially on social websites.

Google has been been rewarding their advertisers based on performance for some time with their Quality Score. Facebook introduced ads that look largely identical to user generated content but it hasn’t been enough to make the site profitable.

It will be interesting to see how users react to the new ad formats, no doubt those who run social websites will be watching the experiment closely and with great hope.

Trends