Hot garbage site does hot garbage stuff. Reddit makes it too easy to take dumps on itself.
We’re laughing over here at Lemmy.
Look, Reddit users! I have access to a frontend API. OoooooOooooo. We’re partying like it’s 2012 again.
People who still are there kinda deserves it.
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.
How is this news?
I don’t visit Reddit much anymore, but isn’t that the way ads have been for awhile over there?
Yes, but reddit wasn’t getting paid for it
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.
On “old reddit” the posts were highlighted so you could tell
I think with the new Facebook style feed it might not be.
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.
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?
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…
Pomeranian poo
They wish.
The most important step in making Pembroke cheese.
I am going to be using this phrase going forward.
Do you have time to find a screenshot of the worst offending example?
It is…but they need to highlight it to investors now.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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%!
They might not click it on purpose, but that’s beside the point.
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…
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
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.
Images you can hear
That’s Brian Cummings for you
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!
Eh, no shame in self promotion lol
How long before the new wave of reddit immigrants here lol
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.
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!
I cannot wait to see this Reddit IPO fail, it will be the fucking most glorious thing when fuck face spez has to face the music.
Don’t worry, the rich always get golden parachutes.
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.
Improved by 28%, not at 28%.
That would be some awful idiocracy type of future and we’re not there… yet.
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%.
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.
Is this something that uBO can detect?
The worst thing is when you open the sidebar. If you click too fast on a sidebar item it registers as a click on the first ad in your feed.
I report the ad as offensive every time this happens which is almost every time.
Why stay there? Make the shift permanent!
I used nails in the past and I never went around telling people how I keep hitting my thumb with the hammer 😭. 😂. I just learned to not put my thumb there and problem solved! So just take your thumb and bring it here! No ads here! I can’t believe they finally did put ads there.
I am mostly on Lemmy now. There are still one or two niche communities still only on Reddit that I frequent.
Thankfully this list keeps shrinking as time goes on 🙂
I still Google stuff like “can I use bananas in kombucha reddit” unfortunately reddit is where the actual Internet population had a voice. No more. Lemmy works differently but I’m going to start using it as a search term and hopefully soon we’ll be getting good results there too…or here I should say.
I haven’t been there in a long time but i remember ads being all over the damn place and they had a certain feel where i knew it wasn’t a regular post and if you looked closely it said promoted. So is this the same thing or are they straight up not even including the promoted tag anymore ?
Pretty sure ads have to be identifiable as ads almost everywhere, against misinformation (because ads usually lie).
