The next attention-grabbing post you see in your Reddit feed might just be a paid 'free-form ad'.
Calling them "free-form ads," Reddit said the new advertisements are its most native format ever, designed to look and feel like community content shared by real people.
The ads, meant to mimic the site's megathreads, will enable advertisers to utilize a variety of formats in one post, including images, videos, and text.
According to numbers from Reddit, free-form ads got 28% more clicks than all other types of ads on the site and saw a jump in community engagement.
The next time you see an interesting post in your Reddit feed, take a closer look - because it might just be a paid advertisement.
I was curious about the "Philly cream cheese" campaign example they mentioned. I assume it's this post.
The top reply is trolling them, which is awesome. So much for increased engagement.
But even funnier is the next top reply, which seems sincere. But when you look at the user profile, almost all of u/sunshinedogger's comments in the last year are on sponsored posts. So even the positive engagement is manufactured?
"Just like the megathread," an announcement reads, "free-form ads encourage multiple users to come together, get the information they need, and deep dive into the topic at hand."
Reddit explained that the open-ended nature of these ads will give advertisers more freedom to explore creativity and, hopefully, to start conversations with users.
If it's one thing I learned from the last BS they pulled during the protests last year, it's that their actions will have little impact on reddit user behavior. People will complain and express outrage, but the vast majority of users will just sit back and take it like good little AI trainers.
I for one will not be one of them. When they removed mods from communities that were in protest, that's enough for me to stay clear going forward. As much as I miss the content, it warms my soul every time I think about the ad revenue they're missing out on by my own personal decisions to not consume it.
One of the smarter ad analysts I knew likened ad spaces to ecosystems, where a bunch of companies come in with crap ads that aren't related to what people are actually in market for or are misleading, and act as polluters which turn people off from green pastures.
As an example, when mobile browsing was first getting off the ground CTR for mobile banner ads was 15%.
Early results suggest the effort is working. According to numbers from Reddit, free-form ads got 28% more clicks than all other types of ads on the site and saw a jump in community engagement.
Yeah, because users get tricked into clicking and then immediately leave.
I remember it already being a thing 5 years ago with upvote/downvote buttons, karma and everything. I guess they just removed the abyssmally small grey text that said something like 'paid ad' in a corner?
So they seriously not remember what thousands of people left Digg and moved to their platform for???
Reddit had a fraction of the users Digg had at one point. Then Digg changed to a new UI no one liked and started putting adds that looked like posts into the main feed.
I took ads out on Reddit years ago just to see if I could promote my music. It did less than zero and actively dragged me into a load of shit on various subs of interests I had. People there refused to talk to me, and told others not to.
Reddit is toxic. I avoid the site. Or better still maybe people should just spam it with irelevant shit
For anyone who is curious, Coca-Cola! Real cocaine in the lower 13 states and real cane sugar! Nothing blasts thirst like the delicious taste of a coca-cola fizzy drink!
In a few years my computer will be able to run an acceptable but obviously not chatGPT4 level AI that will among other things pre filter this crap from my feed as part of normal ad blocking. Buckle up bitches.
The reddit mobile browser is literally broken and keeps getting worse. They are updating it a lot, but I swear to god it gets worse and increasingly broken with each iteration. I actually liked the browser when they initially killed 3rd party apps, but shortly after that it got a huge redesign that was infinitely worse than before. I am thoroughly convinced they want that experience to be miserable so I go download and use their ad-infested shitty app instead. Fuck reddit.
They had tons of covert "ads" before this, too. Set up like 100 fake accounts (commonly bought from people who create and fluff them up by posting and commenting for a while so they look legit) and then post your add and use like 20 or so of your Bot accounts to upvote and comment to get the ball rolling.
Then you have your add there, got it climbing a bit in "new" and didn't pay a dime for it.
I remember when reddit ads were off to the side and unobtrusive, and often had games or jokes in that space to encourage you to allow reddit past your ad blocker.