4 ms·

Ads on reddit are incredibly deceptive. I'm not sure why advertisers tolerate it. 98% of the ad clicks on mobile are surely fraudulent through being intentional

Ads on reddit are incredibly deceptive. I'm not sure why advertisers tolerate it. 98% of the ad clicks on mobile are surely fraudulent through being intentionally accidental. The ads are designed to look exactly the same as real posts at a glance, with a username, post date, upvote/downvote arrows, deceptive title meant to make it look like a real post, comment section, share link, and image thumbnail. Reddit users are all conditioned to believe that they can tap a thumbnail and be shown a larger preview while staying on the site. On these ads, it takes them to the advertiser's site instead. https://i.imgur.com/Vm68wLP.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Vm68wLP.jpg

bduerst 8y ago
Have you actually run ads on reddit, or are you saying this as a user? If so, what stats have seen (impressions, clicks, conversions, etc.) for your ads?
- tapirl 8y ago
  I agree with OP. My 99% clicks on reddit mobile ad are unintended. It is very annoying, for if I press the back button to early, then the firefox browser will back too the page previous to the page containing the ad I clicked. So generally, I will wait the ad fully loaded then press the back button.
  - ma2rten 8y ago
    You and OP might not be typical users.
barbecue_sauce 8y ago
* locked comment section
bitwize 8y ago
Reddit has become the Something Awful forums without an entry fee. What did you expect? How else are advertisers supposed to capture that millennial and post-millennial dollar through a platform like that?
jedberg 8y ago
That ad looks totally obvious to me. It has three different elements that differentiate it from regular content.
- SippinLean 8y ago
  It looks like it's made to appear as much like non-ad content as it possibly can while still maintaining plausible deniability on your part. We stopped advertising on reddit after the rise of the_donald and other white supremacy subs led to our ads being placed next to a lot of bigotry and white supremacist content, even in subreddits you'd generally consider innocuous. The hate groups have spilled over into most subs now.
therealdrag0 8y ago
I think splicing in ads that look like real posts is fine (this is what most social media companies do), but redirecting to another site is not fine.

bduerst 8y ago

Have you actually run ads on reddit, or are you saying this as a user? If so, what stats have seen (impressions, clicks, conversions, etc.) for your ads?

tapirl 8y ago
I agree with OP. My 99% clicks on reddit mobile ad are unintended. It is very annoying, for if I press the back button to early, then the firefox browser will back too the page previous to the page containing the ad I clicked. So generally, I will wait the ad fully loaded then press the back button.
- ma2rten 8y ago
  You and OP might not be typical users.

barbecue_sauce 8y ago

* locked comment section

bitwize 8y ago

Reddit has become the Something Awful forums without an entry fee. What did you expect? How else are advertisers supposed to capture that millennial and post-millennial dollar through a platform like that?

jedberg 8y ago

That ad looks totally obvious to me. It has three different elements that differentiate it from regular content.

SippinLean 8y ago
It looks like it's made to appear as much like non-ad content as it possibly can while still maintaining plausible deniability on your part. We stopped advertising on reddit after the rise of the_donald and other white supremacy subs led to our ads being placed next to a lot of bigotry and white supremacist content, even in subreddits you'd generally consider innocuous. The hate groups have spilled over into most subs now.

therealdrag0 8y ago

I think splicing in ads that look like real posts is fine (this is what most social media companies do), but redirecting to another site is not fine.