Reddit is introducing a new ad format that looks similar to posts made by users on the platform, the company announced on Thursday.
  • orangeNgreen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    267·
    8 months ago

    I don’t visit Reddit much anymore, but isn’t that the way ads have been for awhile over there?

    • db2@lemmy.worldEnglish
      59·
      8 months ago

      Yes, they’re taking from the Apple playbook so people who don’t know will think they actually do things that don’t involve leather or sheep at Reddit HQ. It’s IPO shenanigans.

    • wise_pancake@lemmy.caEnglish
      30·
      8 months ago

      It used to be, they were called sponsored links, but the comment sections got filled with angry comments about the ads and people would downvote the shit out of them, then they removed comments, and after the redesign ads didn’t have threads/engagement but now they do.

      One of my friends tried advertising that way and it went poorly, and the ads weren’t even for a real product just a test balloon for the concept.

      Pepe also got very mad when your ad replaced the moose in the sidebar.

      Ironically, it was spez who introduced sponsored links with comments then, so what’s old is new again! I wonder if this time will be different… (Not really, I know how this will end)

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        4·
        8 months ago

        When I was still using Reddit, I used to report those ad posts for terrorism, inappropriate content or whatever term like that.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      8 months ago

      On “old reddit” the posts were highlighted so you could tell

      I think with the new Facebook style feed it might not be.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      15·
      8 months ago

      The difference is companies used to just run their own super cheap bots to spam fake “engagement” to the site. Now since the API is gone they have to pay Reddit directly for the privilege.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      I think the differentiation is in who’s placing the ad.

      There were sponsored ads before where a company reached out to Reddit and bought advertisements and read it took the money for them and posted them. They were labeled as sponsored.

      But since the beginning of Reddit, advertising firms have just posted nearly blatant ads without notifying anyone.

      Sounds to me like reddit’s just removing he sponsored indicator from their sponsored ad sales.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    216·
    8 months ago

    Organic advertisements that look similar to user posts on reddit? How could they do such a thing?

    Anyway, fellow lemmings, for no apparent reason, Today I Learned that Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated movie, “Barbie”, is now available on Blu-ray and select streaming services.

  • noodlejetski@lemm.eeEnglish
    155·
    8 months ago

    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.

    • DaddleDew@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      8 months ago

      I bet the “community engagement comments” are just people warning others that it is an ad

      • elvith@feddit.deEnglish
        9·
        8 months ago

        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…

    • wise_pancake@lemmy.caEnglish
      10·
      8 months ago

      I don’t believe that number, the average reddit clicks one of every 4 ads shown?

      No way.

      Edit: I misread the post to be 28% CTR, you can ignore my comment.

      • Identity3000@lemmy.worldEnglish
        32·
        8 months ago

        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.

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.caEnglish
          5·
          8 months ago

          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%!

      • brakebreaker101@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        8 months ago

        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.

      • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        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.

    • 4am@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      Advertising plateaued in terms of effectiveness a long time ago, so now it’s gotta be about fraud.

  • exanime@lemmy.todayEnglish
    66·
    8 months ago

    So if ads are just like user posts, why would companies pay for advertising when they can just have an intern, paid in “experience and exposure”, make regular posts and maintain any different aliases?

    • Kissaki@feddit.deEnglish
      69·
      8 months ago

      Ads get shown because they’re paid. Regular posts compete with all other posts, and user filters and subscriptions.

    • 4am@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      8 months ago

      Artificial ranking. Without an API it’s much less reliable for botnets to astroturf; now they’re said “if you can’t beat em, join em” and closed the API and everything is for sale: Even the honesty of the site.

  • lechatron@lemmy.todayEnglish
    40·
    8 months ago

    This is the exact same thing Digg did when they released 4.0, which caused the huge Reddit migration almost 15 years ago.

    • MagnyusG@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      8 months ago

      the problem is companies have weaponised complacency, there’s too many people that don’t care and that’s why they keep getting away with it. do it enough times and people will begin to think it’s inevitable and just put up with it.

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
      20·
      8 months ago

      Yep, I’m a former Digg user who left at the v4 launch because of this exact thing - they made ads indistinguishable from normal user posts.

      People are saying this isn’t that big a deal, that Reddit won’t just die after this. The thing is, Digg still exists but it’s a shadow if its former self and nobody cares about it. It’s present, but its presence isn’t relevant. This change is likely to push more of the users who submit quality content to Reddit away from it, degrading the site community even more than last year.

      Lesson not learned, apparently.

      • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        8 months ago

        Right, but weren’t there a bunch of other changes at the same time that other people didn’t like? This seems like more frog boiling.

        Plus digg wasn’t as ingrained and established as Reddit is now.

        Plus Reddit had some really clear things about it that people liked better.

        And while there are some actually really good Reddit alternatives now, most don’t have a BIG draw for most people. And a bunch of people still complain about lack of content being the big problem (same with why millions of idiots are still using Twitter)

        I mean, look how few of us actually moved over permanently after the Great Migration last July, and that pissed off way more people than this probably will (with mass protests and everything).

      • micka190@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        8 months ago

        Digg still exists but it’s a shadow if its former self and nobody cares about it

        As far as I’m concerned, so is Reddit. The only reason to go there anymore is for Q&A that get SEO spammed on Google. All the communities I was a part of either died after they changed the API (the only people left are the lurkers and low-effort posters) or had their mods replaced by boot lickers who immediately proceeded to not moderate the subs (which made them dead or full of spam).

        But hey, now it sure looks like Reddit is alive and well! Just look at all those ads, bots, AI replies, totally legit user posts!

        • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
          3·
          8 months ago

          It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some internal discussion at Reddit of what happened to Digg, and in preparation for alienating large groups of users they intentionally put some things in place to artificially inflate user activity.

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      8 months ago

      Digg was also much smaller than reddit is today, with an even smaller amount of content contributors. Once the contributors moved to reddit, Digg was all but dead and everyone followed suit.

  • btaf45@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    8 months ago

    If the ads allow me to comment and say “your product sucks” then I don’t mind.

  • makyo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    8 months ago

    I still use it for some of the niche communities I can’t get here but I’m more than happy to drop it if these new ads somehow manage to get past uBlock

    • 4am@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      8 months ago

      They probably will. The next evolution in ads is going to be serving them within other organic content, your browser can’t block them if it can’t tell the difference. Now you can just pay Reddit to astroturf for you.

      Drop them, they’re literally QVC.

      • lagomorphlecture@lemm.eeEnglish
        15·
        8 months ago

        Haha that’s such a great point. I love your comment almost as much as plants love Brawndo. It’s what plants crave. You can get Brawndo at every major retailer by the way and President Camacho fully endorses Brawndo.

      • kingthrillgore@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        I remember when blog network Federated Media pulled this and it didn’t work for them, it was a straight march into an acquisition.

  • affiliate@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    8 months ago

    the platform’s most popular post types, the megathread, which is a sort of one-stop-shop for discussions about popular topics. Similar to megathreads, free-form ads are meant to help readers get the information they need quickly. The company says the new ad format would be a good way to do things like launch a product or introduce a brand to a new audience.

    imagine seeing a new mega thread each time a brand releases a new flavor of deodorant or something

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.eeEnglish
      24·
      8 months ago

      Realistically, this likely won’t piss off their userbase nearly as much as the API fiasco last summer. A significant amount of users stayed in light of a number of subs going dark, so I have a feeling an influx in ads won’t really grind too many gears (or they will but will just bitch and nothing more).

      Reddit is much more mainstream these days, and your average Melvin is just used to ads at this point.

    • KeriKitty (They(/It))@pawb.socialEnglish
      8·
      8 months ago

      Oh, woe 🙀 It’s bad enough that we’re stuck with me (ba-dum tssh, self-deprecating humour there :D ) but now we’re gonna get even worse critters from Reddit because it’s gonna be ones who stayed with it during the previous exodus. Bleh!

    • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      “If your username was a username, how username would username username?”

      They’re here.

  • anarchyrabbit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    8 months ago

    I cannot wait to see this Reddit IPO fail, it will be the fucking most glorious thing when fuck face spez has to face the music.

  • bitwolf@lemmy.oneEnglish
    16·
    8 months ago

    The worst thing is when you open the sidebar. If you click too fast on a sidebar item it registers as a click on the first ad in your feed.

    I report the ad as offensive every time this happens which is almost every time.

    • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      8 months ago

      Why stay there? Make the shift permanent!

      I used nails in the past and I never went around telling people how I keep hitting my thumb with the hammer 😭. 😂. I just learned to not put my thumb there and problem solved! So just take your thumb and bring it here! No ads here! I can’t believe they finally did put ads there.

      • bitwolf@lemmy.oneEnglish
        5·
        8 months ago

        I am mostly on Lemmy now. There are still one or two niche communities still only on Reddit that I frequent.

        Thankfully this list keeps shrinking as time goes on 🙂

        • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          8 months ago

          I still Google stuff like “can I use bananas in kombucha reddit” unfortunately reddit is where the actual Internet population had a voice. No more. Lemmy works differently but I’m going to start using it as a search term and hopefully soon we’ll be getting good results there too…or here I should say.

      • unconsciousvoidling@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        8 months ago

        I haven’t been there in a long time but i remember ads being all over the damn place and they had a certain feel where i knew it wasn’t a regular post and if you looked closely it said promoted. So is this the same thing or are they straight up not even including the promoted tag anymore ?

  • Nobody@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    8 months ago

    All those moderators spent all those years fighting bot spam, and now the admins are deliberately opening the floodgates for the IPO.

    I wish I could say I was shocked, but this was 100% foreseeable given their behavior since the third party app fiasco.