1y ago

Here's How Reddit F**ks Advertisers

There's been a few people who commented this in the past, but as an advertiser on Reddit, I want to share the numbers I see.

First, there's a few things to understand in the world of advertising:

Cost Per Impression - Usually shown as a cost per 1000 impressions, this is how much it costs to run a regular ad
Cost Per Click - This is a different type of ad where you only pay for who clicks. It's also the reason sometimes you see really bad ads - They're only paying per click, so they want the most gullible customers
Analytics - I can watch who comes to my website and what they do. I can actually watch a lot more info than that, but it's all I need to run my businesses
Organic User - Someone who came to my website without an ad

PSA: If you're not using uBlock Origin to block ads, please install it. Firefox - Chrome. Every other mainstream adblocker sells your data in some capacity, but uBlock Origin is open source.

Now, with those things in mind, I pay for Cost Per Click, and I target a more expensive user group. In the ad I'm about to show you (picked at random, but it's within +-20% of most my ads), it costs me an average of $0.82 every time someone clicks my ad:

(Yes, it's brutally expensive. If you really hate ads, install AdNauseam. You will cost advertising companies thousands of dollars.)

But okay that's fine, because roughly 2,000 people went to my site, right? Lets see what they did when they went there

See - There's something interesting about this, and it's less apparent in other advertising networks. You see while Reddit charged me 1,600$ for 2,000 users, my own analytics show only 1,142 people came to my site in the same time window - and that number also includes my organic users, by the way.

So what happened to almost 50% of the users I paid for? Some people accuse Reddit of inflating the numbers, but that's illegal, and there's a much simpler explanation. Reddit's PMs and are deliberately designing ad placement to maximize clicks (and get more money). What they don't realize, is they've made everyone miss-click on ads, so both users and advertisers miss out.

In fact, that miss-clicking part is trivial to prove. Guess when I ran advertising campaigns on Reddit?

Anyways, that's all for now. Reddit doesn't only screw over their users, but their advertisers as well.

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75 comments

That's stage 3 enshitification for you.
- Wow. What a fantastic read
  
  Be sure to read the other blog post linked in that blog, too:
  https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
  It's a rant from a veteran social media/blog writer from some of the earliest days of the internet.
  It's a bit repetitive, occasionally overwrought, and very long, so feel free to skip some paragraphs, but if you've been around the net for a while, especially if you were here before Facebook, you'll recognize exactly what they're describing and know that anger.
  That feels like 25 years of shit I've never been able to find the words to say.
  
  Damn
  Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control.
  Stop being human. A mindless bot who makes regular purchases is all that’s really needed.
  
  I was looking for that article a couple of weeks ago, and for the life of me could not remember where I'd originally seen it. I didn't even notice it was there when digging this up. Amazing!
  Going to bookmark that this time.
  
  Thanks for sharing, I see what you mean about it feeling like something you have wanted to say.
  A section I liked is
  And I also understand that we are the generation who has to go through this part of it. We’re the ones born in time to be forced to make the rules and defend them. To say hey maybe one guy shouldn’t be able to own the village square. Because it was never remotely possible before. It’s all new and we have to figure it out. To agitate and legislate and be constantly vigilant. Maybe it’ll all seem so obvious and settled in 50 years, but those are our 50 years and no one else is going to have to be the first to have these conversations and try to make policy out of them. That’s us, it’s our lot, and it sucks ass, but this technology is the singularity we geeks have been talking about, and it turns out it’s not just impossible to imagine life on the other side of it before it happens, but it’s really fucking hard to figure out life on the other side of it once you get there, too.
  Lately I've been feeling a sense of dull but oddly optimistic sense of resignation about the fate of internet and privacy and all the AI bullshit, and I think this paragraph captures that feeling.
- Woah, what? There are stages??? Do tell!

75 comments