The next attention-grabbing post you see in your Reddit feed might just be a paid 'free-form ad'.

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.

  • @MereoEnglish
    92•2 months ago

    “Just like the megathread,” an announcement reads, “free-form ads encourage multiple users to come together, get the information they need, and deep dive into the topic at hand.” Reddit explained that the open-ended nature of these ads will give advertisers more freedom to explore creativity and, hopefully, to start conversations with users.

    Enshittification to the extreme…

    • @[email protected]English
      21•2 months ago

      Hahaha, what’s your problem, come on, let’s just dive into the topic of how delicious Snickers™ bars are and what a great value they are too!

    • @[email protected]English
      12•2 months ago

      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?

      • @[email protected]English
        6•2 months ago

        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.