Investing in what makes Reddit unique: Introducing Contextual Keyword Targeting and Product Ads - Upvoted
www.redditinc.com

“We’ve known for over a decade that people come to Reddit to talk about the products they love – take r/BuyItForLife for example, a community of over 1.5 million redditors who have been sharing recommendations and advice about their lifelong, must-have purchases since 2011. These updates will uplevel the search-and-discover experience for both brands and our users by tapping into our differentiated value as a hub for actionable conversation”

  • Slayer 🦊@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    As someone who runs a small buisness and has paid for ads online. Why the hell would I want an ad on a platform where half of its users are planning to jump ship?

    • StarManta@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      That’s overestimating the number of users who are planning to jump ship for sure. We are the noisy ones because we have a lot to complain about right now. It probably more like 1-5% that are planning to leave Reddit indefinitely.

      The key word though is “planning”. Because that 1-5% contains an outsized portion of the biggest moderators, content creators, and active users. After we jump ship, Reddit is going to have more spam and abuse (and learn the value of the free moderation they’ve been getting up til now), and less valuable content once you get through that. So Reddit might end up losing half its users as it becomes more useless, even if it’s only a small fraction that’s planning to leave right now.

      • zalack@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        People forget that there is a huge bias in online engagement towards whoever is unhappy with a thing. You see it in gaming subs all the time. People who like the game tend to… play the game, while people who have a bone to pick are the ones who put it down and vent their frustrations online.

        Even if 80% of the comments about a game are negative, that 80% might all come from 15% of the player base who dislike it.

        I fear the same thing is happening with Reddit. It’s a very engaged 5% that’s making up 90% of the comments.

        I do hope I’m either wrong, or without that 5%, content quantity and/or quality drops enough to impact casual users’ screen time.

      • Tetreo@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        1 year ago

        My reaction upon reading this is that I think you’re expecting too much, I think reddit will be fine without me, you or everyone else leaving.

        That’s okay though, the platform doesn’t need to fail for you to be happy moving on from it.

        • laxu@lemmy.ml
          1·
          1 year ago

          It’s a stupid move from Reddit because all they needed to monetize 3rd party apps was to offer fair API pricing that the 3rd party devs could pass onto their users. Or alternatively tie 3rd party app API usage to having a Reddit premium account which directly brings the money to Reddit.

          On a platform heavily built upon the content provided by users, what could happen is that the platform loses the people who were writing good content and retains the people posting fluff - low effort memes, links to clickbait articles etc. That’s going to eventually push away users who were looking for more than that.

          On top of that if moderators leave, that leaves the platform open for a flood of spammers, scammers, bots etc which annoys the people still using it, eventually making more leave.

          Pushing more ads is just another nail in that coffin.