Live coverage of ad:tech San Francisco by David Shabelman.

No matter how many times we’re exposed to a successful young entrepreneur, it’s always a little bit disconcerting to run into one to give you a reality check of just what you’ve accomplished with your own life. That segue leads us to this morning’s keynote presentation at ad:tech San Francisco, with Digg founder and chief architect Kevin Rose onstage being interviewed by Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen on the stage of Digg and consumer generated media.

Digg.com is the wildly successful social news Web site that lets its users determine which are the most popular stories to display.

Sticking with the theme of the conference, Hansen first asked Rose about the advertising outlook for the company. Digg currently has a three-year advertising outsourcing deal with Microsoft that’s set to expire in another year. Rose said digg is ramping up its ads sales staff and expects it to be about 10 to 15 people within the next year.

More exciting is that Digg is looking to break free of a straight banner advertising revenue stream and do things a little different once the partnership with Microsoft expires.

Rose is looking for more interaction between Diggs’ users and its advertisements, saying interaction between user and ads provides much quicker feedback for the advertiser. Rose said Digg’s user base already likes to vote on things so its ads could also have an element of voting. Rose said he would love to see a world where if an ad is “really crappy” it gets thrown off the site and the advertiser actually gets charged a higher price. If an ad is successful ad, on the other hand, the advertiser is charged less. Interesting thought.

For more coverage ad:tech SF, visit our overview page here.

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