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.

  • @[email protected]English
    454•3 months ago

    I like how they try to sell the idea that tricking users is in fact a nice and innovative way to advertise

    • @[email protected]English
      192•3 months ago

      And that the “increased community engagement” isn’t mainly comments of people complaining about being tricked into clicking on an ad.

              • @GestridEnglish
                8•3 months ago

                They’re in the middle of trying to get their users to create accounts with E-Trade, their Directed Share Program (DSP) administrator. They’ll start selling shares to their users as part of their DSP late next week. After that is the IPO.

      • JohnEdwaEnglish
        10•3 months ago

        The moderation effort required to clean up these ads must be massive.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•3 months ago

          I am sure that in the first iteration they did not remove the “Report” function, but those suckers learn fast

    • @[email protected]English
      8•3 months ago

      “we could just lie to people” is an advertising tactic somebody always comes up with. It’s a Rubicon that absolutely shreds customer goodwill, though.

      Assuming, of course, it isn’t already shredded.