Digg, the leading social news site, unveils a new ad platform that applies the same voting system it uses for news to advertising. Digg Ads will look and feel like user-submitted content but will be clearly marked as sponsored and will empower Digg’s 36 million-strong community to elevate the most relevant ads by voting them up or down.

Marketers will now get real-time feedback on the performance of their advertising messages, ensuring more cost-efficient and effective campaigns that resonate with Digg’s highly sought after and engaged community.

The Digg Ad platform will roll out to the site in several phases, beginning with the integration of ads that appear alongside organic content on the Digg website. The system is designed to elevate great ad content and filter out what isn’t resonating with the Digg community. As users “Digg,” or vote up, ad content, they’ll see the best and most relevant ads more often, while lower performing ads will be seen less until they are priced out of the system.

“With Digg Ads, we have two key objectives: to provide advertisers a more effective way to reach consumers, and to provide the voting community of Digg users with a more dynamic, relevant advertising experience,” said Mike Maser, Chief Strategy Officer for Digg.

Over the next few months, Digg Ads will launch in beta with several partners, including Electronic Arts, Intel and others across a range of verticals. Digg will continue to evolve the platform based on input from its advertisers and community to optimize user experience and advertising performance.

In addition, Digg continues to build out its direct sales team focused on selling high-end, custom ads on the Digg site. Digg still plans to continue its current relationship with Microsoft, selling Digg’s network inventory in parallel with this new platform. Last week, Digg announced the addition of Chas Edwards as Chief Revenue Officer. Edwards joins Digg from Federated Media.