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Hey jmarbach, we haven't made any changes to targeting in the last month. The changes described in this post were made 6+ months ago, which means any performanc

Hey jmarbach, we haven't made any changes to targeting in the last month. The changes described in this post were made 6+ months ago, which means any performance difference you're seeing over the last month are entirely coincidental. The deprecation of our old ads platform didn't involve any changes to the way ads were trafficked on the back-end, it simply turned off our outdated front-end interface for ad buying.

jrcii 9y ago
Oh, you snuck in the (harmful, secretive) changes a while back so it's okay. You have nothing to say about that fact that the user is only able to squeeze a response out of reddit because he made a front-page Hacker News comment. This response confirms everyone's worst suspicions about what's going on here.
jmarbach 9y ago
Can you please indicate exactly when the change from contextual to behavioral targeting was made and when it was communicated to existing advertisers? For example, in the initial announcement post (Mar 30) there is no indication that changes to the targeting methodology had been made already: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/62fake/weve_launched_a_completely_revamped_selfserve_ads/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/62fake/weve_laun...
huhtenberg 9y ago
Jamie, I am a very heavy reddit user and I was constantly finding myself in a situation when I would see ads for, say, diapers while browsing /r/software. I was also given an option to "report" such ads for violating Reddit's advertising guidelines and one of the option was to file it under "This ad is not relevant to this subreddit". From users perspective this makes it look like the ad was sneaked onto /r/software by a disingenuous advertiser. -- Also, the very decision to show ads outside of their targeted subs is EXCEPTIONALLY STUPID and I don't use caps lightly. Previously they felt and acted as community-oriented announcements - you see one, look at it, perhaps visit the link, hide it and be OK with looking at another one. But now ads come across as a irrelevant stream of random bullshit, just like all other ads everywhere else. Reporting doesn't do anything. Hiding is plain broken on mobile, with hidden ads showing up again and again with "unhide" option... which would've been funny if it weren't obnoxious. The change basically managed to destroy all the goodwill and tolerance I had for reddit's ads in a matter of days, prompting to add a cosmetic rule to uBlock. I genuinely wish I didn't have to, because some of sub-restricted ads were in fact interesting.

jrcii 9y ago

Oh, you snuck in the (harmful, secretive) changes a while back so it's okay. You have nothing to say about that fact that the user is only able to squeeze a response out of reddit because he made a front-page Hacker News comment. This response confirms everyone's worst suspicions about what's going on here.

jmarbach 9y ago

Can you please indicate exactly when the change from contextual to behavioral targeting was made and when it was communicated to existing advertisers? For example, in the initial announcement post (Mar 30) there is no indication that changes to the targeting methodology had been made already: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/62fake/weve_launched_a_completely_revamped_selfserve_ads/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/62fake/weve_laun...

huhtenberg 9y ago

Jamie, I am a very heavy reddit user and I was constantly finding myself in a situation when I would see ads for, say, diapers while browsing /r/software. I was also given an option to "report" such ads for violating Reddit's advertising guidelines and one of the option was to file it under "This ad is not relevant to this subreddit". From users perspective this makes it look like the ad was sneaked onto /r/software by a disingenuous advertiser. -- Also, the very decision to show ads outside of their targeted subs is EXCEPTIONALLY STUPID and I don't use caps lightly. Previously they felt and acted as community-oriented announcements - you see one, look at it, perhaps visit the link, hide it and be OK with looking at another one. But now ads come across as a irrelevant stream of random bullshit, just like all other ads everywhere else. Reporting doesn't do anything. Hiding is plain broken on mobile, with hidden ads showing up again and again with "unhide" option... which would've been funny if it weren't obnoxious. The change basically managed to destroy all the goodwill and tolerance I had for reddit's ads in a matter of days, prompting to add a cosmetic rule to uBlock. I genuinely wish I didn't have to, because some of sub-restricted ads were in fact interesting.