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.
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.
15 percent for banner ads is actually pretty good.
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.
If the ads weren’t terrible, people would not have invented and popularised the ad-blocker.