Web 2.0 has brought the wisdom of the crowds to shake out the best news content (Digg, Reddit) and web pages (Stumbleupon, Delicious); why not the same to suss out the best ads, which Web 2.0 sites are reliant upon as their principal source of revenue, too?

Mixx, an up-and-coming challenger to the likes of Digg, has launched an aptly-named service called Sifter, that allows its rating-happy userbase to apply their discriminating tastes to ad creatives supplied by Mixx’s advertising partners.  Advertisers can quickly get feedback on the sorts of creatives and messaging that resonate with online users. Participants–limited to powerusers on the site–enter to win prizes based on their rating activity, and, naturally, earn bragging rights and influence on the site through “karma points.”

Of course, Mixx isn’t the first company to entreat its userbase for advertising feedback.  Facebook began allowing users to give feedback on ads last year. HubPages competitor Squidoo had a program by which the number of ad impressions afforded to an advertiser was proportional to users’ rating of the ads (their program is now defunct). Mixx’s Sifter, though, is not data gathering alongside advertising; it’s data gathering about advertising that leverages its site’s user behavior (although those creatives deemed successful could eventually run on the site).

Will it work? Possibly, but there is a risk: the clique of powerusers on a site like Mixx might have particular tastes and sensitivities that are not reflective of the broader Web public, and therefore might provide feedback that’s meaningless outside the confines of the site.

Still, Mixx has lined a couple of clients (LivingSocial and Clorox), and expects to generate $4,000-8,000 per week from the service. If the advertising feedback clients gain is truly meaningful, then expect other sites with a similarly active userbase to try something along the same lines.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.