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Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave
(www.techdirt.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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I literally made a reddit account a few days before the hullabaloo started, specifically to buy advertising on reddit.
I stopped advertising on blackout day for moral reasons regardless, but it also seemed like it just overall wasn't worth it in general. And, my observation of the ads I see as a user has been that they aren't at all tuned to what I would be likely to want, or constructed so I'd be likely to click on them. Some platforms I have to consciously avoid clicking on ads or scroll past them deliberately when my natural tendency is to click on them. On reddit it's just weird nonsense that I want to scroll past anyway.
In short, my brief experience with reddit ads made me conclude that it's probably a waste of money anyway.
I would assume that almost all clicks are from people on the mobile app accidentally tapping ads while they try to scroll past them, because they're in the main feed. So click quality being garbage doesn't surprise me.
This was my experience. Almost every ad I clicked on was a mistake; either I thought it was a real post and wasn't paying close attention, only to navigate away in disgust, or I clicked on it purely by accident. I had like 50k+ karma (to give you some idea of much I used reddit) and might have honestly clicked an ad once.
Reddit ad targeting is a joke and I dont even understand how. How can they not tell what my interests are when I've literally subbed to them? It's the easiest targeting set up in the world and they still can't make it work.
(1) Because the more irrelevant ads they show, the more accidental clicks they can collect, and the more ad revenue. There will be individual clients (e.g. Adobe) who probably have some measurable results, but my guess is that most of their advertisers show pretty good metrics in terms of "cost per click" etc, and aren't paying close enough attention to realize that their real return on ad spend is extremely low.
(2) Reddit's just as incapable / uncaring about writing good ad targeting as they are about constructing the rest of the site.
Pick one. Aaron Schwartz would be furious at the current state of reddit.