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>As an advertiser, I understand why these changes are necessary for them to be successful in the existing Google/FB duopoly. Well then maybe you can help me un

>As an advertiser, I understand why these changes are necessary for them to be successful in the existing Google/FB duopoly. Well then maybe you can help me understand. I see this going exactly as you describe, but I don't understand what's wrong about the old advertising model... just charge more. Direct advertising on reddit seems like it should be very lucrative. Couldn't they also sell trackers You wrote > This has led users to feel that they are the reason Reddit exists and the content creators and sub owners vs. the reality, which is that they are the product. The content creators aren't wrong, are they? Granted, to Reddit eveyone who views the page is the product that they sell to advertisers for money, but the content creators are the ones drawing in the page views, not reddit.com (or tumblr.com, etc), and they are selling that content to drive page views. Sure the dollar is king, but without content to generate pageviews reddit is nothing. I feel like this is indicative of a destructive and characteristically narcissistic attitude that pervades the Valley, namely that people who participate in the online information exchange--not as idle lurkers but as active participants--are essentially a resource to be extracted. This won't work long term, the effects are already pretty obvious on Reddit, a lot of the best content creators have already abandoned most of the site and if they continue down the road you outline it won just be the best memesters and the people who have interesting and nuanced personal philosophy (both of which have mostly vacated reddit in the last 1-3 years), but also anyone who has an interesting story to tell, which a huge draw for a lot of people. If Reddit continues to go down the road of "boiling the frog" it will just be Buzzfeed in a few years, and it's such a waste--I doubt that Reddit has a product (the product here being a BBS-like service) that can generate a user profile with comparable value to that of google and facebook, the data is not rich enough. That said, I'm curious as to why their aren't more trackers on reddit, it seems like google amazon and facebook would be keen to add their users' reddit browsing habits to their profile.

shostack 9y ago
> "but I don't understand what's wrong about the old advertising model... just charge more. Direct advertising on reddit seems like it should be very lucrative. Couldn't they also sell trackers" There have been complaints of reach being too low, so I could see the line of thought with making the broader targeting the default. Brand advertisers often don't care as much about the context (as long as it is brand safe) and care more about the person. It can lead to some issues, but allows targeting at much greater scale because of the inventory it opens up. I agree with other comments though that they should leave it as an advanced targeting option. Not every advertiser performs the same, and some do much better in a narrowly-configured contextual targeting setup. > "The content creators aren't wrong, are they?" I don't think they are. But it isn't that black and white in reality. Many would not be where they are today without Reddit existing as a platform for them to grow their audiences. I think they and Reddit are somewhat symbiotic and a better balance could be reached.

shostack 9y ago

> "but I don't understand what's wrong about the old advertising model... just charge more. Direct advertising on reddit seems like it should be very lucrative. Couldn't they also sell trackers" There have been complaints of reach being too low, so I could see the line of thought with making the broader targeting the default. Brand advertisers often don't care as much about the context (as long as it is brand safe) and care more about the person. It can lead to some issues, but allows targeting at much greater scale because of the inventory it opens up. I agree with other comments though that they should leave it as an advanced targeting option. Not every advertiser performs the same, and some do much better in a narrowly-configured contextual targeting setup. > "The content creators aren't wrong, are they?" I don't think they are. But it isn't that black and white in reality. Many would not be where they are today without Reddit existing as a platform for them to grow their audiences. I think they and Reddit are somewhat symbiotic and a better balance could be reached.