In early testing of the new format, Reddit found that free-form ads outperform all other ad types in average click through rate (CTR) by 28%, along with increased community engagement when comments are enabled
so they're bragging how much more misleading the new format is, gotcha.
Uhmmm based on my behavior before I left, the engagement is probably "click the three dots, hit report, select spam and block user". That worked at least for a short while before they got rid of that feature...
Careful, they didn't claim to be getting 28% engagement from users... Just that this ad format performs 28% better than other ad types. We have no idea (from this article, at least) what the comparison actually means in real world usage.
In early testing of the new format, Reddit found that free-form ads outperform all other ad types in average click through rate (CTR) by 28%, along with increased community engagement when comments are enabled.
Ah, you are right, I misread that sentence as the CTR being 28%!
It's just 28% more than the CTR of the other ad methods. It isn't necessarily 4ish times. Let's say before they were getting 100 clicks per ad with the old format. With the new format they're getting 100*1.28=128 clicks.
What, are they gonna, pfft . . what, like . . make it up since there’s nobody watching? Like, oh yeah we’re saying way more people like ads just to, what, make more money?! As if! Pssh! Noooo. That’s . . that’s just crazy talk.