In early testing of the new format, Reddit found that free-form ads outperform all other ad types in average click through rate (CTR) by 28%, along with increased community engagement when comments are enabled
so they’re bragging how much more misleading the new format is, gotcha.
I don’t believe that number, the average reddit clicks one of every 4 ads shown?
No way.
They might not click it on purpose, but that’s beside the point.
What, are they gonna, pfft . . what, like . . make it up since there’s nobody watching? Like, oh yeah we’re saying way more people like ads just to, what, make more money?! As if! Pssh! Noooo. That’s . . that’s just crazy talk.
Careful, they didn’t claim to be getting 28% engagement from users… Just that this ad format performs 28% better than other ad types. We have no idea (from this article, at least) what the comparison actually means in real world usage.
In early testing of the new format, Reddit found that free-form ads outperform all other ad types in average click through rate (CTR) by 28%, along with increased community engagement when comments are enabled.
Ah, you are right, I misread that sentence as the CTR being 28%!
It’s just 28% more than the CTR of the other ad methods. It isn’t necessarily 4ish times. Let’s say before they were getting 100 clicks per ad with the old format. With the new format they’re getting 100*1.28=128 clicks.
Yes, I was wrong, thank you for correcting me!
I bet the “community engagement comments” are just people warning others that it is an ad
Uhmmm based on my behavior before I left, the engagement is probably “click the three dots, hit report, select spam and block user”. That worked at least for a short while before they got rid of that feature…
I don’t visit Reddit much anymore, but isn’t that the way ads have been for awhile over there?
It is…but they need to highlight it to investors now.
Yes, they’re taking from the Apple playbook so people who don’t know will think they actually do things that don’t involve leather or sheep at Reddit HQ. It’s IPO shenanigans.
Do you have time to find a screenshot of the worst offending example?
It’s totally possible to hold a negative opinion of something and not bring up your unrelated distaste for Apple.
It’s also totally possible to admit that Apple does what I described, frequently. Distaste is irrelevant.
When talking about advertising, though, Apple’s actions have been pretty amazing for the consumer.
So to bring up an unrelated negative thing they might do in a thread that has nothing to do with them or their business is kind of weird.
It’s like you can’t stop thinking about Apple.
It’s like you can’t stop thinking about Apple.
The advertising worked!
Yeah but where’s the fun in that?
Reddit is a pot of boiling cat piss…
It has improved?
Was it boiling corgi cum before?
Pomeranian poo
I’m liking these, uhh… “colourful” descriptions.
Well, maybe “liking” is a strong word but they’re amusing 😅
Just don’t ask how they got all that corgi cum…
The most important step in making Pembroke cheese.
They wish.
I am going to be using this phrase going forward.
The difference is companies used to just run their own super cheap bots to spam fake “engagement” to the site. Now since the API is gone they have to pay Reddit directly for the privilege.
Yes, but reddit wasn’t getting paid for it
On “old reddit” the posts were highlighted so you could tell
I think with the new Facebook style feed it might not be.
It used to be, they were called sponsored links, but the comment sections got filled with angry comments about the ads and people would downvote the shit out of them, then they removed comments, and after the redesign ads didn’t have threads/engagement but now they do.
One of my friends tried advertising that way and it went poorly, and the ads weren’t even for a real product just a test balloon for the concept.
Pepe also got very mad when your ad replaced the moose in the sidebar.
Ironically, it was spez who introduced sponsored links with comments then, so what’s old is new again! I wonder if this time will be different… (Not really, I know how this will end)
When I was still using Reddit, I used to report those ad posts for terrorism, inappropriate content or whatever term like that.
How long before the new wave of reddit immigrants here lol
Oh, woe 🙀 It’s bad enough that we’re stuck with me (ba-dum tssh, self-deprecating humour there :D ) but now we’re gonna get even worse critters from Reddit because it’s gonna be ones who stayed with it during the previous exodus. Bleh!
Realistically, this likely won’t piss off their userbase nearly as much as the API fiasco last summer. A significant amount of users stayed in light of a number of subs going dark, so I have a feeling an influx in ads won’t really grind too many gears (or they will but will just bitch and nothing more).
Reddit is much more mainstream these days, and your average Melvin is just used to ads at this point.
A month or so ago, I was in a PT office and overheard a normal looking person (normie) talking to their PT about Reddit. I thought the very same thing about the new Redditors being all mainstream and well, icky. I really don’t think I am better than them, but my nerd-ego does.
Uh…ok.
This is the exact same thing Digg did when they released 4.0, which caused the huge Reddit migration almost 15 years ago.
Digg was also much smaller than reddit is today, with an even smaller amount of content contributors. Once the contributors moved to reddit, Digg was all but dead and everyone followed suit.
the problem is companies have weaponised complacency, there’s too many people that don’t care and that’s why they keep getting away with it. do it enough times and people will begin to think it’s inevitable and just put up with it.
A core principle of enshittification
Yep, I’m a former Digg user who left at the v4 launch because of this exact thing - they made ads indistinguishable from normal user posts.
People are saying this isn’t that big a deal, that Reddit won’t just die after this. The thing is, Digg still exists but it’s a shadow if its former self and nobody cares about it. It’s present, but its presence isn’t relevant. This change is likely to push more of the users who submit quality content to Reddit away from it, degrading the site community even more than last year.
Lesson not learned, apparently.
Digg still exists but it’s a shadow if its former self and nobody cares about it
As far as I’m concerned, so is Reddit. The only reason to go there anymore is for Q&A that get SEO spammed on Google. All the communities I was a part of either died after they changed the API (the only people left are the lurkers and low-effort posters) or had their mods replaced by boot lickers who immediately proceeded to not moderate the subs (which made them dead or full of spam).
But hey, now it sure looks like Reddit is alive and well! Just look at all those
ads,bots,AI replies, totally legit user posts!It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some internal discussion at Reddit of what happened to Digg, and in preparation for alienating large groups of users they intentionally put some things in place to artificially inflate user activity.
Right, but weren’t there a bunch of other changes at the same time that other people didn’t like? This seems like more frog boiling.
Plus digg wasn’t as ingrained and established as Reddit is now.
Plus Reddit had some really clear things about it that people liked better.
And while there are some actually really good Reddit alternatives now, most don’t have a BIG draw for most people. And a bunch of people still complain about lack of content being the big problem (same with why millions of idiots are still using Twitter)
I mean, look how few of us actually moved over permanently after the Great Migration last July, and that pissed off way more people than this probably will (with mass protests and everything).
Prepare the instances!!!
As if I didn’t have enough reasons to visit the site.
Organic advertisements that looks similar to user post on reddit? How could they do such a thing?
Anyways, fellow lemmings, for no apparent reason, Today I Learned that Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated movie, “Barbie”, is now available on Blu-ray and select streaming services.
I was about to tag Margot Robbie, but of course it’s you
Eh, no shame in self promotion lol
I doubt the movie companies would ever try patronizing to Lemmy. The select streaming services will be links from division by zero users to pirate streaming sites.
The subreddit /r/hailcorporate has existed for ages pointing this out. Shills have been around since forever and buying upvotes is trivial.
[Authorized by the mods] I’ll be giving away 2 sets of these cool gamer keyboard and mouse with neon lights that I just happen to like and have no affiliation whatsoever with the company at all
45k upvotes #1 on r/all
Very natural
Honestly the fact that reddit has still not figured out how to profit off of organic ads blows my mind and helps highlight their leadership incompetency. Companies have been doing this for free on reddit for so long.
I think it comes down to the tens of millions of dollars that the reddit executives sold out to. It’s easy to not care when someone is throwing $100 million at you. Also: fuck spez.
All I know is, they pay me every time I say it. Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
Fuck you! I’m eating!
Images you can hear
That’s Brian Cummings for you
“Piss on my leg once, well… you pissed on me. Piss on my leg three times? Well… Well… maybe I like getting pissed on”
George Bush Jr. (probably)
Its like still being on Twitter. All the data you need is there. If you are still using these platforms, you support these kinds of polices and behaviors.
People who still are there kinda deserves it.
'Course they do
There’s absolutely no fucking way CTR for those is 28%.
I do not believe that.
Posts don’t even have a CTR that high, that would mean the average user goes no further than 4 ads before clicking one.
Now I wish I bought some stock so I could get in on a shareholder lawsuit about them cooking the books on this shit.
What’s more likely, someone at reddit fucked up an analysis, or these ads are 14x better than Google or 31x better than FB?
What’s most likely is that you misread or misinterpreted what was stated. It says the new format outperforms other types of ads by 28%, not that they get 28% CTR.
I replied to you you elsewhere in this thread, but they never claimed to be getting 28% CTR. They only claimed that this format performs 28% better than alternatives.
If a different ad format was getting 1% CTR, then a 28% improvement is still only a total 1.28% CTR.
I think maybe a re-read is in order. They’re claiming the new format outperforms the (presumably) old format by 28%, not that the CTR is 28%.
Improved by 28%, not at 28%.
That would be some awful idiocracy type of future and we’re not there… yet.
I mean, generally I’m all for shitting on reddit, but there’s also a third option: Reader’s not understanding what 28% better than other ad types means.
They have been trying SO hard lately. A featured section on After Midnight, absolutely riveting, totally 100 percent factual posts being discussed by very real unpaid people on Tiktok and Instagram.
Real glad I’m here instead.
New? There used to be a whole sub dedicated to calling out astroturf ads on Reddit. We always got shouted down lol
Yeah I remember this shit happening already, even mimicking the writing style of a typical Reddit title.
anyone have a good estimate for how long it will take for these ads to become more numerous than actual posts, at least in terms of visibility. I’ve got to imagine the impact is going to be spectacular since they are doing this desperate IPO as their fall from grace accelerates.
Didn’t they already have that?
Definitely. Except companies just did it themselves.
What’s “reddit”?
