Digg will begin selling premium ad inventory on the social news site directly July 1, taking over that role from ad partner Microsoft.
Under a revised agreement, the software giant
will continue selling remnant and "network reserve" inventory, or higher-quality placements sold on a blind basis.
ClickZ reported Monday that Digg's
internal sales force will focus on selling non-standard custom inventory along with a significant portion of its standard IAB units.
The move follows Digg's recruiting of former Yahoo executive
Thomas Shin in January to build a direct sales team to better monetize the site. The company had cut 10% of its 75-person workforce shortly before announcing Shin's hiring. Digg expects to have a
national sales team of five to seven reps by year's end.
"This was sort of a natural evolution of where we thought the business would go," said Mike Maser, chief revenue and strategy officer for
Digg. He added the company would maintain its three-year ad partnership with Microsoft under the amended terms until October 2010.
In a statement, Microsoft said: "Digg has created its own
internal sales executive team, and we respect their decision to sell their owned-and-operated site inventory directly to help further accelerate their growth as a company."
Microsoft also has a
display ad deal with Facebook, in which it invested $240 million in 2007.