Not that I am a proponent of ads or sponsored content, but a crazy experiment just occurred to me: a steeply discounted sponsored ad filter/section with the sam

Not that I am a proponent of ads or sponsored content, but a crazy experiment just occurred to me: a steeply discounted sponsored ad filter/section with the same upvote/downvote rules as the rest of the site (but still no comments). The advertiser faces the risk of wasting money by inappropriately targeting the community's interests. Potentially higher engagement because if you give users the right to express an up/down opinion, they're going to do it whether it is advertising or not, so at least they're viewing the ads. The scoring is all relative, so even if 80% of the people down vote out of principle, the better and more interesting ads will still percolate to the top.