This really makes me sad. Webiste are moving from "click-the-monkey" ads to "camouflage" ads.
Surfing... Surfing.... Doh! (Clicked on camouflage ad).
Facebook is using this hard - it takes considerable horsepower to try to determine what's linkbait vs. what's actually going on in your social network.
I'm hoping that someone (hopefully a HN member) will come up with a "better way" and in turn make the web a better place.
I was just going to say the same thing. Disguising the ad has value in that most users of digg have no clue how digg makes money outside the overt ads. Same goes with google. I would dare say 99.99% of google users have no idea how google makes money because the text link ads look so much like regular search results
The more I think about it, you're right. We were recently explaining to one of our clients about some basic SEO topics. They did not understand that the links on the side of Google are paid links.
I wonder what the CTR is for Google Ads on typical Google search?
the ads are actually useful and relevant. they're also clearly labeled as sponsored. you're just as likely to click on them by mistake as any other ad. odds are you'd actually click on them by mistake a lot less. if you don't like the ad? vote it down/bury it. I'm actually very bullish on this model.
They are not clearly labeled they have the same look and feel of a digg submission and are only lacking some of the touches at the bottom like comments.
The top says sponsored by but it says sponsored by in the light unreadable text that is nearly impossible to see if you're just navigating the site like a normal user.
I've never used digg but this and their digg bar debacle are such shady business tactics that I feel I should lump them in with cash for gold.
If you don't see this as clearly labeled ads than I believe something is wrong with your eyes. http://i.imgur.com/8Djg7.jpg
The "digg-style" ads also lights up on mouse over. I know this sucks and feels like being duped, but if user gets duped by this kind of ads, they probably deserve to get duped. But they paraded the idea (more than once) months before running it to make sure everyone understands what going on, both within digg in the form of digg blog posts which was on the front page and outside digg in the form of interviews to tech sites like techcrunch, which were also on the digg frontpage.
I am not a big fan of digg, I much prefer Reddit. But Reddit has almost the exact same system as digg (I think reddit's system was live first).
Its easy to sit in your chair and criticize, but someone's gotta pay the bills.
>if user gets duped by this kind of ads, they probably deserve to get duped.
This is not the correct way to think about the user experience
I'm wearing my glasses, and it honestly took me about 30 seconds of scanning to figure out which of those articles was an ad. Now think about the readwriteweb/facebook fiasco (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...) and consider how an average person interprets that page.
As much as I don't like digg, I think it is fair to say that the avg digg/reddit users are more tech savvy than facebook/myspace users. So this is not an equal comparison.
Techmeme finds the right balance between "punch the monkey" and "camouflage." Their ads are styled like the rest of their site, so the cognitive bias against bright, flashing colors is diminished, but they're clearly denoted as being sponsored.
Surfing... Surfing.... Doh! (Clicked on camouflage ad).
Facebook is using this hard - it takes considerable horsepower to try to determine what's linkbait vs. what's actually going on in your social network.
I'm hoping that someone (hopefully a HN member) will come up with a "better way" and in turn make the web a better place.
// updated Dow -> Doh