Go-kit looks pretty nice, anyone else have experience with it?
It will lock you down, as it's very hard to migrate from go-kit.
IMHO, it only brings problems.
Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
101–110 of 132 posts
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I suspect that's the real purpose of the redesign I mean at this point I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever. Is there even a plausible other explanation? I only lurk on reddit but it's rather comical how bad it's become. And not just the interface, the content too, /r/all is basically Facebook with a slightly younger audience and you have to get deeper and deeper into niche subreddits to find worthwhile discus…
> you have to get deeper and deeper into niche subreddits to find worthwhile discussions. Which raises the question wouldn't that be better served with a forum...
I think the issue with many disparate forums is discoverability.
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#103A means for rapidly selecting and loading an advert which will then be blocked by the users' browser. (Although even without adblock, are there actually all that many overt ads on Reddit, other than the sidebar ad which nearly always is an ad for a different subreddit?)
Judging from the types of screenshots Reddit users post, they're probably using the app, not a browser on their PC with an ad blocker.
Unfortunately, they're probably using the app because they got annoyed by how much the app is forced onto you while using the web version.
I however, will not relent.
I still use old.reddit.com, even on mobile, because the new React version is slow and constantly tries to get me to download the app so that they can show me ads.
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a pretty emotionally driven comment and would do well to provide some sort of concrete story behind why the ad approval process is a farce and why this particular group of individuals happens to be full of assholes?
I advertised for a travel site in the travel reddits. I never got a single ad approved "out the door" - only after I opened a ticket and asked why they were not approved did someone actually respond and approve it. The denial was within a few minutes of submission and the approval only after I opened a ticket in which case the response was "We're sorry, we've approved the ads" - but no one ever answered the question of editorial review.
It may appear "emotionally driven" because my experience with reddit ads has been terrible. I struggled through it, i followed the example ads, i created very topical ads and when i finally got all approved and done, they just didn't perform well either. I talked with peers in the industry and they all avoid reddit ads for the most part because of similar experiences. I haven't spent any money with ya'll since that bad taste experience.
for me, it would just be easier to site target reddit through google and do adwords for desktop/web traffic.
The editorial review literally feels like some redditor judging your ad on personal opinion vs an editorial review for passing some kind of targetable creative process. That's a terrible way to treat paying customers and i don't that experience on any other market i advertise on.
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#105I 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…
No remote? What is the justification for this?
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#106Earlier 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.
If memory serves, the primary driver of reduced traffic to Digg 4.0 was the fundamental shift in how their submission mechanism worked, not in a change to their layout. I recall some kind of promotion mechanism where superusers gained some amount of control over their "front page" equivalent. Also, unlike Digg, Reddit hasn't been bleeding members to another site for some time now, so there's nowhere for Reddit users…
There was post on here awhile ago from an engineer working at digg during the v4 launch that was pretty interesting. https://lethain.com/digg-v4/
I think Discord has been siphoning off some of the users on the gaming related subreddits, but it fundamentally serves a different purpose so its not a wholesale replacement.
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#107As 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 could have gone with Iponweb[1] or something like that but at Reddit's scale it might actually (for a change) make sense to roll their own. They're one of the largest websites in the world now, so what holds for 'ordinary' websites and their best practices may simply no longer apply to Reddit. The whole Reddit saga for the last few years is quite the story of turnaround management done well. [1] https://www.ipon…
Yeah I was thinking that if what they need or are planning is truly unique or just needs to be homegrown (a la FB's ad system tightly integrated with first party data), maybe it really does make sense. Or maybe any alternative third party company they engaged tried to pitch them a huge/prohibitive contract.
But then I was thinking that if it's going to be so important, why a 3 person team with no experience running Go in production?
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#108As 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.
I agree that it's important to keep the money-making component of a business free from external dependency to a large degree, but I think there's some liability that's being ignored here. A 3 person team built such an important piece of Reddit in a language they never used in production? I hope the team was at least experienced in ad-tech.
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you have to get deeper and deeper into niche subreddits to find worthwhile discussions. Which raises the question wouldn't that be better served with a forum...
I think the issue with many disparate forums is discoverability.
This seems to be the key/blocker for a decentralized internet, well social apps at least. If someone can solve discoverability, it'll make a lot of things possible.
Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you actually run ads on reddit, or are you saying this as a user? If so, what stats have seen (impressions, clicks, conversions, etc.) for your ads?
I agree with OP. My 99% clicks on reddit mobile ad are unintended. It is very annoying, for if I press the back button to early, then the firefox browser will back too the page previous to the page containing the ad I clicked. So generally, I will wait the ad fully loaded then press the back button.
You and OP might not be typical users.