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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.

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.

AdolfSchmitler ,

"28% more clicks"
Yeah cuz ppl thought they were actual posts not ads lol

kenopsik ,

Yep, advertiser don't care how they got those clicks. They just want the numbers to go up so they feel like their "investment" is doing something. Tricking people into thinking it's user content, showing half naked girls for a dumb mobile gambling game, showing fake products... they don't care. Advertisers only have one thought: "Hurr Durr Numbers Go Brr"

Retrograde ,
@Retrograde@lemmy.world avatar

You made me look up Bill Hicks' marketing bit

I miss him

Wiz ,

Do you know what's also getting more clicks than last year at this time and the year before? Lemmy!

The_Tired_Horizon ,
@The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world avatar

I took ads out on Reddit years ago just to see if I could promote my music. It did less than zero and actively dragged me into a load of shit on various subs of interests I had. People there refused to talk to me, and told others not to.

Reddit is toxic. I avoid the site. Or better still maybe people should just spam it with irelevant shit

bassomitron ,

Reddit's advertising platform has been garbage the entire time, I remember randomly going down the rabbit hole on social media marketing articles and the unanimous consensus among them was how bad/useless traditional advertising on Reddit was. One of the many reasons was due to how aggressively advertisement averse the userbase was (there were plenty of other critiques, such as how awful the management dashboard, metrics insight, etc. were). That being said, they did point out how fairly successful "organic" advertising could be on the site, e.g. AMAs, ads disguised as seemingly innocent meme posts, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I loathe advertisements, too. I think reddit is/has been going the wrong direction in focusing so much on ads as their primary method of generating revenue. However, there is no excuse for harassing an independent artist just trying to get their work out there to get discovered. Sorry you went thru that mate.

The_Tired_Horizon ,
@The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world avatar

I took the ads out because even though it isnt a career (music is a serious hobby, you might say) there was push back against putting your own music on the platform. "No self promotion" was a general rule iirc. A few subs kind of let it happen but they were rare.

The dashboard was indeed shit. It had all the wrong details and choices for someone like me.

I would have done an AMA but I'm just a bloke, LOL! And yes I agree - the users are anti-ad. Not sure how a site like that floats, financially. Can only imagine there is corp or Government money secretly going in (as we found out years after Google started up).

Churbleyimyam ,

More desperation in big tech I see.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Not sure the FTC is going to be a big fan of this...

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising

Contend6248 ,

First GDPR now this, they don't give one fuck and try to cash out

rottingleaf ,

Reddit's new paid ads look exactly like user posts

So what's new?

Blackmist ,

I'll tell you what's new, pal. The McRib Megaburger, at McDonalds. It's nutritious and delicious at just $7.99 or $9.99 with fries and a drink of your choice as long as you don't want a milkshake or anything with actual sugar in it.

ezures ,

mcrib

kattenluik ,

Broodje Mexicano superiority, or even just the Kwik Trip equivalent.

droans ,

Wow. Everyone, ignore this guy, he's also an ad.

Instead, you should hop on over to your local Chevy Dealership and ask about test driving the all new 2025 Tahoe. Drive one home today for less than $2,000 down!

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

Whenever I'm stressed out about too many ads, I take Fark-It-All. Ask your doctor if Fark-It-All is right for YOU.

Gloomy ,

This.

I tried Fark-It-All and it legit helped me reduce my stress level a lot. After Amazon drove up its Ads I felt I realy couldn't take it any more. And since there is literally nothing you can do about ads, neither on reddit nor on Amazon, I looked for other options. And what can I say? Taking some Fark-It-All brings the fun back into funding, hypercapitalist corpations trough engaging with Ads. I highly recommend Fark-It-All, even if you just feel like you could potentialy be stressed out a bit by Ads. I've heard a lot of realy positive feedback on taking it preventative.

No /s, it realy is the shit. Just try it out and see for yourself.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

Right? Been that way for quite a while. One of the main reasons I refused to use the app.

TheRealKuni ,

It happens here, too. Like this shill post about the Scrub Daddy, where the comments are highly suspicious.

rottingleaf ,

It even happens in RL conversations, say, with people who bought stock of a big company subtly (or they think it looks so) recommending it.

andros_rex ,

Why has that sponge been shilled so heavily? I see it being marketed on TikTok of all places…

TheRealKuni ,

Because they have a creative marketing department who knows the cheapest ways to market things are to make it look like it isn’t marketing.

Stoneykins ,
@Stoneykins@mander.xyz avatar

Solution is simple, community should turn any suspiciously product focused thread into an advertisers nightmare of filth

Then the ads will just be the ones with the comment sections turned off

The_Tired_Horizon ,
@The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world avatar

Those types of ads have been there since near the start. Its been confusing people for years. All that will happen is the popular non-ad posts will get accused of being paid for.

watersnipje ,

Yeah I remember a few years ago when there was suddenly some sort of hype around Nutella and Nutella-based memes. Which just so happened to coincide with a major Nutella advertising campaign on other platforms.
People were eating it up and generating content, essentially doing an advertiser’s work for free 🤷‍♀️

The_Tired_Horizon ,
@The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world avatar

Didnt work out for Cinnamon 😂

watersnipje ,

What are you referring to?

The_Tired_Horizon ,
@The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world avatar

The Cinnamon challenge.

watersnipje ,

Was that related to a company campaign?

The_Tired_Horizon ,
@The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world avatar

Well the nutella one wasnt originally...

watersnipje ,

How do you know?

Test_Tickles ,

They are getting more subtle. Ever notice how actors suddenly rise to the top? Posts about how awesome they are, or how great things they have done are? Right before I left Reddit it was awash with Pedro Pascal and how amazing and humble and down to earth he was, then the new mandalorian came out and after a few weeks, no one gave a fuck about our new god.
I remember I first noticed it years ago when there was this sudden craze for Bradley Cooper, and how he spoke French (really broken, highschool level French). And everyone was amazed at it like speaking a second language made him amazing. It felt really weird and condescending how much praise he was getting for being willing to not only speak to these "lowly foreigners" in "their crazy language", but also to bother to learn it in the first place. And all I could think was "you're talking about French right? An optional language that's taught and the vast majority of high schools across the US?" I mean good on him and great job, but wtf? And then suddenly silence... Bradley who?

AtmaJnana ,

Yeah, let's turn our space into a cesspool! We'll show those darned invaders!

businessfish ,
@businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

i don't think many people would consider posts that are literally paid advertisements part of "our space"

kromem ,

One of the smarter ad analysts I knew likened ad spaces to ecosystems, where a bunch of companies come in with crap ads that aren't related to what people are actually in market for or are misleading, and act as polluters which turn people off from green pastures.

As an example, when mobile browsing was first getting off the ground CTR for mobile banner ads was 15%.

Reddit's metrics are about to go to shit.

CitizenKong ,

15 percent for banner ads is actually pretty good.

laughterlaughter ,

Yeah. That's why OP mentioned it.

But his point is that that number has gone down to shit because later the banner ads became shit.

T156 ,

If the ads weren't terrible, people would not have invented and popularised the ad-blocker.

laughterlaughter ,

We're not disagreeing here.

Ohi ,

You plant shit seeds, you get shit weeds.

If it's one thing I learned from the last BS they pulled during the protests last year, it's that their actions will have little impact on reddit user behavior. People will complain and express outrage, but the vast majority of users will just sit back and take it like good little AI trainers.

I for one will not be one of them. When they removed mods from communities that were in protest, that's enough for me to stay clear going forward. As much as I miss the content, it warms my soul every time I think about the ad revenue they're missing out on by my own personal decisions to not consume it.

Zedstrian ,

Entirely agreed, though I wish there were more of a joint effort between Lemmy and Kbin communities to find novel ways of getting more redditors to switch over to the Fediverse. Wishful thinking perhaps, though it'd be nice to have more active communities around here.

madcaesar ,

The biggest problem with lemmy is that we don't have a good way to search for info.

Usually I do shit like "reddit monitor recommandation", and I'll get some thread where I can read opinions.

We can't do they with lemmy 😐

Omniraptor ,

I disagree, Lemmy's built in search function is much better than reddit's because it lets you search for comments on any instance that you federate with.

Reddit afaik still has no comment search

ilinamorato ,

A while back somebody posted info on how to make a custom DDG search that would search the most common Lemmy instances with one keyword. If you're interested I can go digging for it.

Wiz ,

I'm not the OP, but I would love to know!

ilinamorato ,

Sure thing! The OP is here: https://mander.xyz/post/7198692

Wiz ,

That makes total sense. Thanks!

ilinamorato ,

You're welcome!

madcaesar ,

Honestly your mental health has almost certainly improved since leaving that place.

Their algorithms are designed to pump engagement and outrage. They want you either scared or angry and it sucks.

Lemmy has less content, but is also less addictive and less toxic. Yes it's still social media, it still has shit bags but the numbers are far better.

T156 ,

Lemmy has less content, but is also less addictive and less toxic. Yes it’s still social media, it still has shit bags but the numbers are far better.

Although part of that could also just be due to the size of the place. Lemmy's still absolutely tiny compared to Reddit, and like a lot of social media's early days, it'll likely only get worse as more people move in.

Early Reddit would have been pretty cosy and non-toxic, that would only come in later.

laughterlaughter ,

I never went back to /r/programming after they forced it open with new mods.

I checked reddit every now and then after that, until I read a piece of tragic news that really shocked me and left me sad for days. Then I realized that reddit just stopped being a fun place - the whole point I started visiting it in the first place. Never went back, never looked back.

waterSticksToMyBalls ,

My first subreddit to get banned was one dedicated to pointing out obvious ad campaigns.

Agent641 ,

"How do you do, fellow redditors? Pray tell, of all the Dodge Ram variants, which one is your favorite, and what make it your choice as a discerning American patriot?"

humbletightband ,

And I bet it was banned before the infamous subreddit about underaged girls or even before bans of incel network

waterSticksToMyBalls ,

If was that post jail bait but pre incel ban wave if I recall correctly. They said it was targeted harassment/brigandine bc all the posts specifically named the accounts pushing each campaign.

TheTimeKnife ,
@TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world avatar

Jesus reddit is run by such massive shitheads.

werefreeatlast ,

For anyone who is curious, Coca-Cola! Real cocaine in the lower 13 states and real cane sugar! Nothing blasts thirst like the delicious taste of a coca-cola fizzy drink!

SuperSpruce ,

If the article is about how ads look, could they provide a useful picture?

michaelmrose ,

In a few years my computer will be able to run an acceptable but obviously not chatGPT4 level AI that will among other things pre filter this crap from my feed as part of normal ad blocking. Buckle up bitches.

GratefullyGodless ,
@GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world avatar

So the future is AI ad creators versus AI ad blockers, with all of us caught in the middle. Yay?!

TheBat ,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

Future is the internet populated by bots while humans try to go analog.

ChewTiger ,

I'm entertained, I need a book in this universe.

massacre ,

That book? It's an advertisement...

Gestrid ,

Fortunately, at least in my experience, the adblockers usually win. Even if a company changes something to avoid an adblocker or force someone to turn off their adblocker (Hi, Twitch!), it's usually fixed within just a few hours at most.

ilinamorato ,

It'll always be that way. For a user to see your ad you have to let them download your ad, and at that point it becomes like forcing a prisoner to write their own ransom note without your supervision and then letting them drop it in the mailbox themselves.

fosstulate ,
@fosstulate@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

AI filtering of Reddit isn't the way. The way is leaving the platform. This is beginning to remind me of the 'decrapify Windows' YT videos that offer 20-step multi-application guides for getting a tolerable experience, instead of explaining how to install Mac/Linux. Time spent on a rotten foundation is wasted.

SoleInvictus ,
@SoleInvictus@lemmy.world avatar

I think a lot of the Internet is going to end up shitted up with this kind of nonsense. While leaving Reddit certainly tackles one issue, having a way to filter out the rest of this shit would be useful.

AnagrammadiCodeina ,

But in order for it to work you need HI.
Human Intelligence can help you leave the platform today!

londos , (edited )

I was curious about the "Philly cream cheese" campaign example they mentioned. I assume it's this post.

The top reply is trolling them, which is awesome. So much for increased engagement.

But even funnier is the next top reply, which seems sincere. But when you look at the user profile, almost all of u/sunshinedogger's comments in the last year are on sponsored posts. So even the positive engagement is manufactured?

reflectedodds ,

Dang good catch on the second user, I wouldn't have noticed since I usually don't look at people's profiles.

It's kind of funny that reddit will become this chamber of advertisers making posts and fake users "engaging" while the real people all migrate to lemmy.

londos ,

I'm also curious if the fake users are part of the campaign or if reddit is scamming the advertisers too.

laughterlaughter ,

Why not both?

slaacaa ,

Absolutely, you cannot trust reddit content anymore. If anybody wants to still visit the site, I recommend you buy and AdBlock Gold subscription, which you can get at half the price now. Link and discount code in my profile

Wiz ,

Ublok Origin on Firefox works great, and is free.

Discount code available for half the price of free!

Gestrid ,

Weren't they also caught using AI bots to drive up engagement in some subreddits, too? (I think it was supposed to be some of their subreddits in foreign languages or something.)

laughterlaughter ,

Did you really think all those positive comments were genuine? I almost puked reading the first few.

ilinamorato ,

I live in the Midwest, and I've actually seen a few of those on plates at potlucks. It is indeed disgusting.

LiveLM ,

Man, reading this post nearly gave me a headache. I hate it when brands try to act all 'hip and cool'.

Help us fill this thread with ways you use PHILLY Cream Cheese that shouldn’t be delicious✨ but are ✨

Yes, something about cream cheese freshly squeezed straight from the brick really does hit different.
Why let a little packaging get between you and your PHILLY, am I right?

Shut up brand. Shut the fuck up brand. Jesus Christ

ilinamorato ,

When it's a social media manager acting like an actual human, it's one thing (like when the person running the Moon Pie account roasted the guy for telling them they were wasting their life), and the non-profits are almost always awesome at this (follow libraries, seriously). But if you're trying to write something relatable and your brand guidelines won't let you write about it in the way a normal human would (all-caps "PHILLY," writing "searching with Google" instead of "googling," ©®™ spam, etc) you've already lost.

laughterlaughter ,

Of course it's manufactured! And I'll bet you a blowjob from my cousin Chester that it's all AI-generated.

swab148 ,
@swab148@startrek.website avatar

furiously googles how to prove that a post is made with AI

gardylou ,
@gardylou@lemmy.world avatar

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    Wiz ,

    "As an AI language model..."

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