Digg Partners With Microsoft, Breaks Own Embargo

Kevin Rose broke his own embargo this morning when he announced on the Digg blog that the site had replaced Google with a new ad partner named Microsoft. Oh, the Diggers are going to love this.

Kevin writes:

"We’ve signed on Microsoft as our new partner to sell and serve the ads on Digg. It’s a deal similar to the one Facebook signed with Microsoft last year.

This move gives us an advertising partner with a larger organization and a more scalable technology platform to keep pace with Digg’s growth. Best of all, it lets the Digg team completely focus on new feature development."

Props to Kevin for his totally awesome and cryptic description of the deal, calling it "similar to the one Facebook signed". Dude, what the heck does that mean?

Luckily, Danny Sullivan scored some additional info for us explaining that the deal is set for three years and covers advertising for US Diggers only. The transition from Google ads to Microsoft ads is expected to occur in early August and Diggers shouldn’t feel a thing, except maybe a broken heart.
Under the deal, Microsoft not only replaces Google as Digg’s supplier of text ads, but they’ll also be introducing graphical ads onto the site. It is worth noting that Digg’s advertising deal with FM appears to still be in place, though it does feel like Digg is downplaying it just a bit.

It’s surprising to me that Digg would partner with Microsoft knowing that the community hates Redmond almost as much as they hate us search engine optimization folk. Kevin, what if the kids revolt again?

If I were you I’d keep an eye on the comments starting to flow in at Digg where users don’t seem at all too happy about this. It’ll be interesting to see how the site is affected by the new deal. Heck, it was hard enough getting the community to accept Digg’s new Microsoft category. What are they going to do now that the evil MS is invading their space? Stay tuned.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

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