Good news for all you Techmeme lovers who don’t quite yet have the juice to get into the Techmeme Top Item / Headline list — but do have enough juice to pay for a sponsored listing.

As of early last evening, Gabe is experimenting with putting Sponsored posts not only on the sidebar — but also including recent posts right into the Top Listing at the 10 spot, starting with CCUCEO’s post on “Just Finished Reading Radical Edge … “. Its high lighted in grey (I think — I’m color blind).

Do they have to pay more for this inserted Top Item placement? Apparently not. He’s offering right now as a bonus right now.

How is the sponsored post chosen amongst the three current sponsors? No, Gabe doesn’t roll any dice (quashing the rumour that for a small sum you can be +2 to to Top Item Placement). Much like the current scheme for Techmeme, its all done by algorithm in the background.

Now, ironically, earlier in the same day (yesterday), Tabloo’s post on Yahoo’s tribulations made it organically into the Top Item list — and is still there above CCUCEO’s sponsored listing.

With Tabloo’s post hitting “Top Item Status” what I’d like to know (and Gabe, you can chime in here on this) is if Gabe is running any metrics in the background to see how these two items compare: does the organic top item per unit time pull in more traffic? (probably) Does it convert better? (probably) Does it stay up longer (on average)? (maybe).

Or, from Tabloo’s side what the magnitude of difference in the sponsored column versus organic placement is (I’m guessing a big difference); back to Gabe — whether or not he gives any rebate back to advertisers who make it into the organic placement, since it really seems like the purpose of those sponsored slots on the side is to get them on the Techmeme page (I’m guessing not).

Bottom line is that the new spot for sponsored advertisers is good news for sponsors and equivocal news for blogs and news sites for now. One question I never go to ask is — does the sponsored site squeeze out any organic placements?

(I’m guessing probably not).