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.
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.