Reddit's new paid ads look exactly like user posts

Calling them “free-form ads,” Reddit said the new advertisements are its most native format ever, designed to look and feel like community content shared by real people.

The ads, meant to mimic the site’s megathreads, will enable advertisers to utilize a variety of formats in one post, including images, videos, and text.

According to numbers from Reddit, free-form ads got 28% more clicks than all other types of ads on the site and saw a jump in community engagement.

The next time you see an interesting post in your Reddit feed, take a closer look - because it might just be a paid advertisement.

klef25,

Any ad that starts with TIL or DAE gets an immediate down vote, a cringe, and no further reading

ILikeBoobies,

This isn’t new, a few years ago I was looking at their ad program and they had inline post ads that you were taught to post like a user

Savas,

Ads are not the only reason, but if you’re still on reddit, you clearly missed the point why reddit became popular.

DingoBilly,

Welcome to 5 years ago? This has been around for years…

soggy_kitty,

OP lives under a rock

Cyclist,

This is what killed Digg in 2010.

buddascrayon,

How is this news? Reddit has been doing this for literally years.

stoly,

If I hadn’t already left, this would probably have been the thing that did it for me.

comfy_panda,

Thus even more annoying. I mean at this point I dont even feel like they care.

Yots92,

Too bad that “Greed” is not just the name of the minor antagonist from Full Metal Alchemist…

denast,

Recently went on Reddit and laughed hysterically at the amount of religious propaganda I saw in this format. Example:

1000009776

HiddenLayer5, (edited )

Ok if your ad uses TL;DR or any other internet speak, you deserve to go bankrupt. I’m so fucking sick of corporations trying to cash in on meme culture and trends and ruining it every single time.

TurtleJoe,
@TurtleJoe@lemmy.world avatar

Recuperation has been around for a lot longer than the Internet.

MaxPow3r11,

-religious propaganda -gambling bullshit (including crypto/crypto adjacent bullshit) -military brainwashing/propaganda -alcohol ads

Just the worst fucking garbage bullshit.

DragonTypeWyvern,

r/Atheism held the line for decades, and y’all cyberbullied them for it.

andros_rex,

IMHO, it was an elevator ride that killed r/atheism…

raynethackery,

OOTL. Can you explain further?

andros_rex,

Rebecca Watson had some guy proposition in her in an elevator at a conference, felt uncomfortable and talked about it during the conference. This blew up the internet atheist/skeptic community around 2011 or so, led to a big split. “Elevatorgate”

JonVoightKampff, (edited )

I always thought it was the “faces of atheism” thread.

www.reddit.com/r/…/the_faces_of_atheism/?rdt=6333…

andros_rex,

That was a killing blow + “the professional quote maker.”

But it was a good place for some decent discussion back in the day. I learned enough biology from arguing with creationists there + youtube to test out of college biology….

dumpsterlid, (edited )

/r/atheism often got cyberbullied for being a bunch of insufferable jerks.

I don’t believe in god but you would never find me any closer to hanging out in /r/atheism than any other actually religious subreddit.

I mean, I guess I don’t want to judge that much because of how a subreddit like that can be a place for people living in extremely oppressive/conservative christian communities to express their anger at being in such a suffocating environment, but it often seemed like the criticisms of religion from the sub were more of the “but akshually this part of believing in god is dumb” instead of more along the lines of “who cares if god exists, y’all are incredibly hateful”.

AbidanYre,

-military brainwashing

Yvan eht nioj

andros_rex,

The best thing about those ads is that they’re mostly “AI” generated. You know none of the people making those ads would actually wash the feet of a queer person.

TurtleJoe,
@TurtleJoe@lemmy.world avatar

He Gets Us’ Ad Sponsors Don’t Believe in the Jesus They’re Sellin

ramjambamalam,

I remember when reddit ads were off to the side and unobtrusive, and often had games or jokes in that space to encourage you to allow reddit past your ad blocker.

Times have changed…

DTFpanda,

The reddit mobile browser is literally broken and keeps getting worse. They are updating it a lot, but I swear to god it gets worse and increasingly broken with each iteration. I actually liked the browser when they initially killed 3rd party apps, but shortly after that it got a huge redesign that was infinitely worse than before. I am thoroughly convinced they want that experience to be miserable so I go download and use their ad-infested shitty app instead. Fuck reddit.

roy_mustang76,

I am confident that’s the case - there’s a reason the mobile website is constantly asking you if you’d like to use the app instead… it’s their preferred mode for you to view. Even if it is terrible, it locks you onto Reddit.

NotMyOldRedditName,

They can access a lot more information about you with a native app, and it also gives them the ability to do push notifications which makes things more sticky

llama,
@llama@midwest.social avatar

So now they’re just charging people for what they were already doing anyway.

PoliticalAgitator,

Yep. Reddit puts very little effort into preventing vote manipulation and astroturfing because it all looks like user engagement but they almost certainly know how common it is.

This is just them monetizing the astroturfing as they try and wring every cent from people ahead of their IPO.

Sizzler,

You’re just splurging lies at this point, reddit has always put plenty of effort towards vote manipulation. I dislike reddit but stop making stuff up just for votes.

PoliticalAgitator,

People are welcome to try for themselves, which is how I originally learned they do fuck all. They didn’t even clear the lowest bar of “20 upvotes from 20 accounts, on the same IP with no other activity, just switching with RES”.

Maybe that’s changed in the decade since, but the search results for “buy reddit upvotes” don’t bode well.

Sizzler, (edited )

It has changed since, in fact for me the watershed moment of change came when RES stopped being able to calculate upvotes/dv’s because there was no longer clear feedback that your vote counted.

PoliticalAgitator,

Does that mean they fixed the problem or did they simply make it impossible for people outside of reddit to see the extent of it?

Sizzler,

At that moment they made clear upvoting hazy for people outside of reddit, I doubt it fixed it there but I have seen their anti-vote manipulation system in action since then that does impact “lazy” coders

Morefan,

You’re both right. They are FINE with manipulation if it’s something they want to promote. But if it’s not allowed in their dogma then it’s banned.

Sizzler,

I’ll agree with that.

w2tpmf,

So they seriously not remember what thousands of people left Digg and moved to their platform for???

Reddit had a fraction of the users Digg had at one point. Then Digg changed to a new UI no one liked and started putting adds that looked like posts into the main feed.

Asafum,

I literally would look for reddit posts about suggestions for various things specifically because they weren’t ads.

Thanks spez for fucking killing one of the few resources I had that wasn’t just paid bullshit lying about what products are worth a shit…

WhatAmLemmy,

Let’s be honest here. Reddit had been astroturfed for over a decade, and a majority of posts that spoke favourably of products were ads.

The only value Reddit had in that regard is through Google surfacing the valuable discussions and content (e.g. the ones that weren’t the ads).

andros_rex, (edited )

Reddit from the beginning had bot accounts to artificially inflate its number of users.

Hammerheart,

That was before learned helplessness became a staple of the internet experience, i think a lot fewer reddit users will be motivated to leave compared to the people who left digg for reddit.

Happy to be proven wrong, though.

Jennykichu,
@Jennykichu@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

all the big brains on wallstreetbets out there saying reddit didnt have any additional value to offer shareholders well THINK AGAIN

MyFairJulia,
@MyFairJulia@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, would you look at the time! It’s the year of the fediverse!

elucubra,

On a Linux desktop, obviously.

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