If the market for initial public offerings recovers in the new year, one company that aims to go public early on is Reddit. An IPO will put the spotlight on the prospects for Reddit’s advertising business, which has fallen short of ambitious growth targetsoutlined by executives two years ago. ...
Back when Reddit was good the ads used to be like regular posts with a comment section, so you could actually talk about the product and exchange experiences, and the advertiser would sometimes respond. I found it to be a transparent and valuable way of advertising, and I actually liked the ads back then because there was a social and learning aspect to them. But of course they got rid of that, supposedly because what if somebody says something bad. They don’t understand that the lack of honesty and dialogue is what makes people loathe ads.
Fuck advertising, but that’s a brilliant idea.
From my most recent memory, advertisers can still enable the option to allow comments. It was an interesting idea, and I too appreciate it when advertisers went in there to communicate about valid questions and concerns with their product.
My suspicion is that the big advertisers are using marketing agencies who don’t have the time or budget to go and moderate inauthentic conversations in those comment threads however.