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Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

martechtoday.com

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Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#61

Post by TAForObvReasons »

foepys wrote: post #24
brink wrote: post #2

Why pay for ads when you can pay for vote manipulation and viral marketing through organic posts? The cost / user engagement ratio has to be much better, right?

It's very obvious that advertisers discovered reddit for viral marketing some time ago. In the last few years the number of highly upvoted posts on /r/all that include logos and company names increased dramatically. It's common to find top posts titled along the lines of "My SO and I recreated our first date at " or "The store where I work wanted to burn these clothes but I saved them: ". Sometimes top comments were…

Incidentally there's a subreddit for that: https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#62

Post by aaron-lebo »

pen2l wrote: post #38
ivarv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is by far the best way to stretch your marketing dollar on reddit, but (aside from AMAs) seems difficult for reddit themselves to monetize.

Reddit as a monolith is pretty good at catching that. Sure it'll miss one or two every now and then, but I don't see it being inundated by organic marketing anytime soon. Also, as I understand it, they have been working on catching this stuff behind the scenes and they seem to be doing okay.

Reddit has an incentive to ignore and deny astroturfing. Go to a subreddit, look at account activity, and it is obvious they don't have it under control, at all.

But Reddit was built on fake activity, so what is new.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#63

Post by rplnt »

vita17 wrote: post #11

This is the end of Reddit. They can’t monetize the web version of their site because their users are sophisticated enough to use ad blockers. If they load up their mobile app with ads, people will just use a 3rd party Reddit app. So they’ll have to ban 3rd party apps which will betray all the users who got into Reddit because it was an open platform.

Is there no market for all the data they have? Some statistical API on user behavior, for market research for example.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#64

Post by makecheck »

Reddit tries way too hard to funnel people into their app, which I assume gives them more options for uncontrollable ad spam.

Dark patterns that constantly advertise apps really need to go.

On mobile I prefer the desktop Reddit site due to high link density and the fact that, frankly, browsers are BETTER because of trivial pinch/zoom/scroll, opening in new tabs, etc.

Instead, Every Single Time I visit Reddit I have to deal with a stupid loading animation, then a massive message covering half my phone screen giving me only two options (App or Mobile Site), just so the page will load to the point where I can use the Request Desktop Site command. The experience sucks now, and if they make it worse I will simply stop using Reddit instead of hopping on board.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#65

Post by eropple »

toxican wrote: post #48
seibelj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say HN is far more critical and bullying than reddit, but then again we aren’t trying to lure advertisers

Critical, maybe, but I don't see rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. all over this site like I do on reddit. People are also generally a lot more snarky and sarcastic on reddit than they are here, which could be perceived as 'bullying' if you're just looking to have fun discussions. But of course with reddit, it's 100% up to you to make it good. Find the right communities, ditch the wrong ones, and…

> I don't see rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. all over this site

"All over," no--it's mostly, though not always, contained to the topics at hand. Most times that Sheryl Sandberg or Ellen Pao or any group that would maybe like to encourage people who are not dudes to learn to code and maybe get a job come up, this has historically bubbled up. Similarly, topics that do not revolve around white (and occasionally South and/or East Asian) men usually come with a sidebar of pseudoscience-cloaked racism or the blurfing of "equality of opportunity" with its implications of inferiority.

It has certainly improved since 'dang and 'sctb took the reins. And you can't be an overt meme-turd here and get away with it. But adjusting one's pince-nez and well-actuallying into sexism and racism isn't really better, and on that HN has a ways to go.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#66

Post by marktangotango »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #33

I've been saying for a couple of years now that Reddit is on a clear downward spiral. Do you believe me yet? The right approach is federation with small, user-operated instances that all talk to each other GNUSocial/Mastodon style. That's the only way to make sustainable social networks that work in the interests of their users. Capitalism-driven social networks do not work .

The right approach is federation with small, user-operated instances that all talk to each other GNUSocial/Mastodon style. That's the only way to make sustainable social networks that work in the interests of their users.

It's not yet known if this model is viable, or sustainable. I certainly hope so, but time will tell.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#67

Post by atwebb »

nhebb wrote: post #58
jsonne wrote: post #35

The 500lb gorilla in the room that no one is talking about when it comes to Reddit ads is this. Go to Reddit right now and hit the "All" button and just see how much hardcore pornography pops up immediately. I'm not making some sort of moral judgement here at all, but that can and does scare off tons of big brands.

I don't think NSFW content is shown by default - it needs to be enabled in your account preferences.

It is absolutely shown by default for /r/all, however the default ("popular") view and default subs for a login exclude NSFW.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#68

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

marktangotango wrote: post #66
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #33

I've been saying for a couple of years now that Reddit is on a clear downward spiral. Do you believe me yet? The right approach is federation with small, user-operated instances that all talk to each other GNUSocial/Mastodon style. That's the only way to make sustainable social networks that work in the interests of their users. Capitalism-driven social networks do not work .

The right approach is federation with small, user-operated instances that all talk to each other GNUSocial/Mastodon style. That's the only way to make sustainable social networks that work in the interests of their users. It's not yet known if this model is viable, or sustainable. I certainly hope so, but time will tell.

I think the sustainability of this approach is a tautology. The network cannot die by design, anyone can always stand up new instances.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#69

Post by gk1 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #49
gk1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many marketers do you know? I'm glad to see you edited "99% of marketers" to "vast majority of marketers," but that still reeks of a generalization based on personal opinion and not fact.

> How many marketers do you know? I've talked with hundreds or thousands. But the underlying idea comes from Seth Godin, who I'm sure has talked with at least an order of magnitude more. He has lots of posts on this theme, e.g.: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/the-importan... It's trivially easy to test the idea, just going on Bumble Networking (most people are marketers) and offer some new product or…

I don't see what first-mover advantage has to do with Reddit as a marketing channel. Plenty of companies are already advertising there, and there are plenty of reasons why others aren't doing the same besides being "really dumb and terrible at their jobs.

Re: Reddit is ready for advertisers, but are advertisers ready for Reddit?

#70

Post by zbentley »

> To ensure those whitelisted subreddits stay safe, Reddit monitors the posts published to them using language analysis technology. If it finds posts that violate its quality standards, it turns off ads for that subreddit.

That's surprisingly honorable. I worry that, if Reddit is faced with more financial struggles in the future, this would be among the first things to change. Imagine if, instead of programmatically terminating advertisements and having a human check the content for moderation, they programmatically removed the content instead of the ads.

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