Digg or bury the ads?

Advertisers could face price hikes if their campaigns don't cut the mustard with Digg users.

Digg is a social website that allows people to post up links to share with others. Users then promote or demote the links depending on how interesting they found them.

On its blog, Digg announced that under a new scheme adverts on the site would suffer the same scrutiny.

"Digg Ads will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system," Mike Maser, chief strategy officer for the site, said on the blog.

Although there are obvious pitfalls to the scheme for businesses trying to sell their products, there is equally a positive side, the site said.

Maser said: "The goal here is to give advertisers a way to present content related to their brands and get immediate input on whether it's relevant to the Digg audience, or not."

The scheme is going to launch as a pilot in the next few months with Maser admitting they are still only in the "very early stages".