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.
Years ago you used to be able to comment in ad threads. And most people were just calling the ad out on its bullshit. So they stopped allowing comment replies in those threads.
This will somehow be different?
Yeah, I remember those fun times. See an ad post, look up their scandals on Wikipedia, post about those scandals in the comments…
There’s no way this will work unless they lock down those posts. If they want something that looks like organic engagement with comments that don’t ruin the brand, it can’t work anything like the rest of Reddit. They’ll have to have corporate moderators who remove any post that is even slightly challenging to the brand, because otherwise those will be the ones getting upvotes.