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Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

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Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#61

Post by jamiequint »

bflesch wrote: post #35

I advertised on reddit for our startup roughly one year ago and it was the worst ad management experience I have ever witnessed. For the size and age of reddit the advertiser backend was a real shame. The kind invoices they provide you is laughable, it feels like the whole backend was built by amateurs. On top of that, the traffic we received from reddit was very bad for our e-sports/gaming-related website.

Hey bflesch, a year ago we weren’t even running our own ad server and had just released an early v1 of our new ads management interface. It probably felt like the “worst ad management experience [you] have ever witnessed” because the other major ad management platforms have multiple years and hundreds of engineers/designers on us :) We’ve made substantial progress since then, I’d encourage you to not judge us too early and give it another shot, the platform and products are improving rapidly.

p.s. If any engineers or PMs are interested in helping us build out a world class, high-scale ad platform please get in touch (email in profile). We are hiring for senior and above positions in NY and SF.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#62

Post by ErikDub »

acln wrote: post #8
freecodyx wrote: post #5

i will add to not use the default http.Client/Server, poor performance, instead use fasthttp

I like my HTTP package to actually speak as good an approximation of HTTP as it can, so fasthttp wouldn't be my first option. Furthermore, the HTTP stack doesn't show up on most web servers' profiles. net/http is better understood by the community, interoperates with libraries better (e.g. golang.org/x/oauth2), and is better supported. Use net/http.

The main issue with net/http is that it generates a lot of garbage which is definitely going to show up in your profile if you're handling a lot of requests per second.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#63

Post by supernovae »

grey-area wrote: post #33
katzgrau wrote: post #13

As the founder of a SAAS ad serving company, I can say that as slick as (I think) my platform is, it's not a problem I would want to tackle again. There will be a large volume of technical challenges and required features to support. It'd be like writing Apache or Nginx from scratch. It seems simple on the surface and then you wake up to all kinds of inconvenient and unexpected technical challenges. I'm not sure Redd…

They were already using a third party service. It was slow and opaque, so they ditched it. At the scale of reddit, and because this is how they make their money , this is clearly something they want in house and something it would be a competitive advantage to control, if nothing else it gives them a much clearer conduit to their advertisers, and much greater control over things like ad selection.

The problem with Reddit ads isn't their tech, it's their people. The ad approval process is a farce - and human-managed. Oh, and those humans are assholes. You have to go through many denials - for no reason - submit a ticket to get another approver and approved - for no reason stated. It was the most upsetting process I've ever dealt with.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#64

Post by supernovae »

jamiequint wrote: post #61
bflesch wrote: post #35

I advertised on reddit for our startup roughly one year ago and it was the worst ad management experience I have ever witnessed. For the size and age of reddit the advertiser backend was a real shame. The kind invoices they provide you is laughable, it feels like the whole backend was built by amateurs. On top of that, the traffic we received from reddit was very bad for our e-sports/gaming-related website.

Hey bflesch, a year ago we weren’t even running our own ad server and had just released an early v1 of our new ads management interface. It probably felt like the “worst ad management experience [you] have ever witnessed” because the other major ad management platforms have multiple years and hundreds of engineers/designers on us :) We’ve made substantial progress since then, I’d encourage you to not judge us too ear…

If you work in the ad group, my advice is to fix the ad approval process. I've never had such a disappointing experience in my life. Seems like the approvers have editorial control based on personal preference over any objective evaluation. Since reddit is all about the ebs and flows of whats hot and whats not, sure is a shame your advertising platform is a joke at monetizing that because of the terrible approval process.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#65

Post by jjoonathan »

somethingroma wrote: post #7

Cool. Maybe these guys should get in touch with the redesign guys and get them fired. Also fire any executive that thought it was a good idea. Because all the hard work to serve ads more efficiently goes to waste when the site is a mess and unusable.

The redesign is terrible for usability, but it does one thing very, very well: punish you for using an adblocker (sorry, "software blocker," lol).

There are a few other dark patterns hidden in there too, all coincidentally pushing in a direction that's good for reddit.

I suspect that's the real purpose of the redesign and that all complaints will fall on deaf ears until someone actually manages to disrupt reddit.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#66

Post by dboshardy »

jrockway wrote: post #31
kokey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Digg was bigger than Reddit and then after a certain Digg site redesign they lost a significant number of their users to Reddit and never really recovered.

Where are people going to go this time? I feel like people usually copy their competitors which is why they consider redesigns worthwhile... but which Reddit competitor is Reddit copying here? I don't think there is one. Obviously Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat kind of worry them, but then again, I feel like people are "done" with "social media" so I wouldn't be _really_ worried if I were Reddit. They have the a…

Just because you think people are "done" with "social media" doesn't mean Reddit execs do. They are definitely changing look and feel to be more like instagram and facebook hoping to poach users or at least widen their userbase by lowering the barrier of entry. One of the primary goals of the redesign was changing look and feel to make the site more approachable to a wider audience. They claimed after extensive testing that the old site scared off many potential users because it was "hard to use" (IMO it just looked old, and therefor bad/lame).

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#67

Post by yourbandsucks »

supernovae wrote: post #63
grey-area wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were already using a third party service. It was slow and opaque, so they ditched it. At the scale of reddit, and because this is how they make their money , this is clearly something they want in house and something it would be a competitive advantage to control, if nothing else it gives them a much clearer conduit to their advertisers, and much greater control over things like ad selection.

The problem with Reddit ads isn't their tech, it's their people. The ad approval process is a farce - and human-managed. Oh, and those humans are assholes. You have to go through many denials - for no reason - submit a ticket to get another approver and approved - for no reason stated. It was the most upsetting process I've ever dealt with.

This is the QA process that yields us precocious-looking stock photo 'MIT grads' trying to sell me a wine subscription on every other pageload?

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#68

Post by jjoonathan »

ihuman wrote: post #40
reactor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how come the CEO of reddit is okay with the redesign? It's worse enough that I had to install plugin to redirect to old.reddit.

If you have an account, you can use the old version of reddit by default by unselecting "Use the redesign as my default experience"

That didn't work for me and many others. I had to install an extension.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#69

Post by jjoonathan »

mcny wrote: post #21
jaipilot747 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old.reddit.com or i.reddit.com on mobile.

I don't have to do that when I'm signed in. It is in the preferences.

The pref setting regularly breaks for me and many others. I had to install an extension to reliably get old reddit. Most won't bother.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#70

Post by jjoonathan »

untog wrote: post #42
somethingroma wrote: post #7

Cool. Maybe these guys should get in touch with the redesign guys and get them fired. Also fire any executive that thought it was a good idea. Because all the hard work to serve ads more efficiently goes to waste when the site is a mess and unusable.

What are the actual complaints with the new design? I've been using it on and off and I can't say I've noticed any major issues. Though I'll admit most of my browsing is one on the mobile app these days.

It's very slow and very unreliable.
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