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Reddit raises $410M in new funding

nytimes.com

411–420 of 507 posts

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#411
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made headlines not long ago when Just-Eat I believe was advertising on porn sites, so it's not an impossible ask... but marketers will want to play those campaigns very carefully. It wouldn't take much to accidentally end up next to revenge porn that makes the news or something.

> but marketers will want to play those campaigns very carefully. It wouldn't take much to accidentally end up next to revenge porn that makes the news or something. Can you elaborate further? why is this the marketer's problem? why isn't the ad campaigner completely agnostic on where the ad network sends it? to me, it seems like widespread conjecture. out of the things I've seen people talk about boycotting a brand…

The only situations I'm aware of of general brand contamination are the @stopfundinghate ones, and that's very different - pointing out to brands when their stuff is appearing next to far right content.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#412

What the hell does a site like Reddit do with almost half a billion dollars?! That's insane.

It's not easy to run a company with as many users as they have. As a mod, they've put a lot of work recently into flagging trolls and astroturf accounts, and still have a lot of work to do. I run r/sanfrancisco, and wow there's a ton of bots and trolls flooding our sub about the Newsom recall. They also seem to really want to find a way to monetize content in a new way. They've flirted with crypto and awards, but I i…

> Plus the usual suspects (infrastructure...

Reddit is the only website in the Alexa top 15 (US) that runs completely on the cloud. Everyone else has figured out datacenters save a bucket load of money.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#413
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made headlines not long ago when Just-Eat I believe was advertising on porn sites, so it's not an impossible ask... but marketers will want to play those campaigns very carefully. It wouldn't take much to accidentally end up next to revenge porn that makes the news or something.

> but marketers will want to play those campaigns very carefully. It wouldn't take much to accidentally end up next to revenge porn that makes the news or something. Can you elaborate further? why is this the marketer's problem? why isn't the ad campaigner completely agnostic on where the ad network sends it? to me, it seems like widespread conjecture. out of the things I've seen people talk about boycotting a brand…

Not the original commenter but it's because the marketer doesn't want to be associated with the content. It may devalue the product, be the wrong target audience, cause some social media backlash, etc. (e.g. Disney wouldn't want to advertise Disney+ on a revenge porn page since it would ruin their family-friendly image).

> People know how targeting works, their session and the ad networks.

People in your network maybe. If that were widely true you wouldn't see people swearing that FB is listening to you for showing a mattress ad after you spent an hour searching for it on your computer. The average American has no idea what the hell is going on.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#414
post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

As a reddit user, this sounds exactly like you're trying to drive me away from the site.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is reddit's biggest issue. Astroturfing is more effective than advertising and it's cheaper too.

Astroturfing as in hopping into a group and creating a post promoting your product? Have you ever seen that actually work? Almost every subreddit I see bans any kind of promotion and even posting of links.

The number of pictures that are actually just ads upvoted to the front page was absolutely astonishing when I used reddit. I didn't understand how people could see a Coke can with a funny name on it and not realize that was an advertisement.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#416

As someone who tried to advertise on reddit (though it was > 1-2 years ago, so things may have changed)-- Reddit, along with Twitter, is very advertiser unfriendly. And Im not just talking about the users. I literally couldnt give them my money. I wanted to target a specific subreddit, but couldnt buy any impressions on it for 3 months. The app kept forcing me to advertise on /all, or all technology reddits, which wa…

>Yes, everyone hates ads, but thats how free sites make money. Maybe a simple user forum site doesn't need to make mega valuation levels of money. Maybe it, and other low effort sites like Facecrook and Twatter, should be run as public benefit corps. These companies aren't selling state of the art tech here - why do they need to be such money makers??

> why do they need to be such money makers??

Because that's capitalism. Investors want "growth".

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#417
post #93

Gotta pay the team of people that wholesale censor information there

Funny enough paying for professional moderation will actually help Reddit. The quality of almost every major subreddit is trash due to mods on a power trip (or paid by a third party to push an agenda).

The last thing Reddit wants is to take responsibility for unpopular but necessary moderation.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#418

Reddit is a marketeers dream. Every corporation, product, game, movie studio and consumer device has a big team dedicated to using Reddit for free. Submissions memes and comments are posted by the teams, often out in the open. Reddit gets no income from this advertising. If Reddit were to start looking at charging for these, the platform might change drastically. I'm not sure how, however.

In many ways Reddit is the "social media infrastructure" many other sites pretend to be.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#419
post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

Reddit currently supports many third party freemium clients ( Ala Twitter 2012). These third party apps offer a no ad experience too. Unsure how much revenue reddit shares with these apps though. It helps with growth(more options for users to be on reddit) , but definitely hurts ad inventory, ad targeting insights etc.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#420
post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

One thing that they do not seem to be taking advantage of is how specialized many of their communities are. It seems primed for letting advertisers target to specific audiences, but as a user I don't really feel like the ads I get are targeted to what I read at all? Maybe I am uninformed but it seems like an advertising goldmine that hasn't been taken advantage of. If you are a PC components retailer, users of /r/bui…

bundle that with a profile that easily identifies cross markets by other interests too. you get to double dip. millions of targetable demographic profiles all self sorted and prepackaged for whomever.
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