The New York Times got a chance to sit down with Chief Strategy Officer at Digg, Mike Maser, to discuss the overall success of the special ad-serving engine it integrated into its web service earlier this summer.

They worked on integrating their “social voting” mechanism into sponsored ad placement to provide sponsors and users with a better advertising experience. The users can digg specific ads allowing them to travel up the flow of diggs. Each ad’s cost-per-click is adjusted based upon its number of diggs—higher cost for lesser (buried) diggs. The idea is to encourage advertisers to create ads that are worthwhile to the user, if the ad gets buried, it gets expensive, urging the sponsor to pull the ad down.

Maser boasted that the new platform proved effective, “so far we’ve already tripled our revenue forecast from this initiative.” An Intel sponsored blog earned a 2.2 percent click-through-rate, others earning close to 3 percent, compared with the average regular display ad on Digg earning about .08 percent.

Have you noticed the ads? Have clicked on any, or Dugg any? Considering the web will likely always have ad sponsorship, what do you think of the new model?

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