Reddit @lemmy.world

1y ago

Seen on reddit: Ran out of advertisers. Why? Yes.

278 comments

I wonder if advertisers have been leaving Reddit and if so, how many? I've honestly never seen a social media website/company ask for advertisers like this tbh.
I'm not a lot on social media to begin with, so I'm not sure.
- Well few days ago their valuation by I think Fidelity got cut from 10b to 5.5b. That should tell you something
  
  That was before the whole clown show. The valuation cut was dated May 31st
  
  Major woof if true. u/spez is a true big brain business man.
  
  The cut was multi-staged and started middle of last year. The most recent cut was relatively small (10-15% iirc). As others have pointed out, that reduction doors not take into account the recent self-inflicted wounds.
- I've heard unsubstantiated claims that traffic to the advertiser portal has dropped ~40% since the protests started
  
  I personally reached out to about a dozen advertisers, urging them to reconsider their marketing efforts on Reddit. After privatizing the subreddit I had moderated for 12 years, it seemed like the next logical step.
- I don't see social media companies do this, I see billboard companies do this. On billboards that stay "please advertise on our billboard" for years.
  
  There’s a difference though as a billboard is a physical spot that they are actively losing money on when not filled vs a random spot in your feed.

A quote that always stuck with me was: "'Your ad here' signs are proof that the ad spot doesn't work well, otherwise someone would have put their ad there."
- Somehow your comment reminded me of
  
  C'mon now.
  No reason to get personal
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Caution_Last_Burgerville_for_24,800_Miles.jpg
  On that note, how do you post images inline?

Am I wrong in thinking this is sad as hell? Like seeing an old faded billboard with the same "your ad here!" text that's been there for ages.
- Sad, but I ain't mad. This is the bed that Wish.com "Elon" made for Reddit
  
  Great Value Elon!
- It's really sad for me to see a social media platform like reddit crumble. I spent years there.
  
  I spent more time at Reddit then I did in the K-12 education system. I have a lot of good memories and learned a lot from both, but I have no desire to return to either.
- It's sad, but hard to feel bad for doing it to himself.
  
  It's like meeting your ex who has now become a homeless meth-addict.
- I will never feel sorry for advertisers or the people who work with them.
  :)
- That's exactly what I said elsewhere in the thread. This is billboard company behavior.

Wait… Reddit has ads?
- Hats off, that's both an argument for the use of third party apps and for eliminating third party apps at the same time...
  
  Reddit gold ran the platform. Going for profit killed the API.
  
  As all adblocking solutions, Yay from the user, Nay from the corporate.
  
  Buy an ad for Lemmy. Edit: I seem to have clicked the wrong reply location. I don't feel like deleting it though.
- As an ex-RiF user, and also desktop+uBlock, apparently yes.
  
  I use libredirect in Firefox and Google Web cache for reddit if there's only an answer I can find there
- unfortunately. and they are just s bad as you think
- Ya. That is a large part (not the only reason) of why Huffman gambled and lost on killing 3rd party apps. People using Apollo, or any other app that wasn't the trash official app, weren't getting ads at all or were giving their ad dollars to a third party. By killing third party apps, that forces anyone who actually wants to use Reddit to use the official suck ass app or the garbage desktop site which also had alt options that used the API. When users are funneled into only using official Reddit products, that means they're only consuming ads that Reddit makes a profit from.
  I used Bacon Reader for almost ten years. It didn't have ads for half a decade and when ads did come, it was a non intrusive banner ad at the bottom. The Reddit app is riddled with obstructive ads. So is the website unless using an ad blocker. Reddit when used the way the admins want, is just one ass blast of shitty ads.
  
  Just opened the official reddit app. Saw one post. And, no joke the second post was "promoted"
  
  🥓 for the win. 😢 tears shed. 🥓 was the best. I think my app store purchase was about 2014. I was on bacon for about 9 years I think.

We should all club together and get some ads for the fediverse on there.
- The best ad I saw for Reddit (back before the grand Digg migration) was one day, everyone agreed to stop posting direct links to articles and instead post the links to the Reddit discussions for said articles.
  Suddenly, one day, the entire Digg feed was links to Reddit.
  We should do the same thing (on say 8/1) to give time for the different federated instances to get accustomed to the higher traffic, more activity on the feed, and more people to welcome the future Reddit refuges, just like Redditors once welcomed us during the Digg 4.0 exodus.
  
  It would be funny and I'd love to see it but you KNOW spez and his butthurt bootlicking simps are petty enough to block/ban any link that goes to any address that's associated with a Lemmy instance AND instantly "permanently suspend" any account that participates.
  Reddit admins even ejected their favorite agitator powermod, u/awkwardthepanda, for posting a John Oliver picture.
  They are truly prepared to burn every bridge.
  ...
  But maybe that's the point. Maybe they should be FORCED to burn every bridge and annihilate themselves in the inferno.
- And give money to Reddit? Hell no. Let’s see how much time they take to refill those ad slots by themselves.
  
  Honestly? If it’s a way to siphon users away from Reddit and towards Lemmy, we all need to look at this sort of thing as an investment. Sure, it gives Reddit some cash up front… but it also siphons away their primary value proposition to advertisers: the user base.
  Running subreddit-specific ads pushing lemmy/fediverse-hosted alternative for a couple months will do WONDERS in the long term.
  And yes, it’s distasteful to give Steve money, but at the same time, giving him a comparatively small amount of cash now will ultimately end up taking a far, FAR more significant amount of money away from him later, in the form of audience count he can offer to his advertisers.
- I'm in. Anyone got a catchy idea?
  
  Tired of ads like this? Try Lemmy!
  If you were federated, you'd be home now.
  Reddit wants to show you ads.
  Consume. Or federate.
  
  What's wrong with a good old fashioned "fuck spez"?
  
  Maybe something like, "Your ad could be here or if you're sick to the back fucking teeth of ads you should come to lemmy"
  
  "Barbie", only in theaters July 21st.

I saw that on my few last days on Reddit. I was wondering about their rates b/c I was wondering what it would cost to take out an ad calling spez a complete twat.
- I hope my username irks him continuously
  
  Somebody on here snagged the username "spez" and that brings me great joy as well
- Please do it 🤣

Your post made me think ads had already invaded. So, I hate you.
- That's not going to happen on Lemmy. It is technically possible but it's very highly unlikely.
  
  It's an unfortunate reality but that's probably going to have to happen. Instances can't be expected to grow and maintain on pure goodwill. Some might get by with donations but it's pretty known that Mastodon servers that couldn't support themselves on donations vanished. It's a huge ask for someone to pay money, time and effort to run a server for perpetuity. Usually you can only ask for 2 out of the 3 lol.
  We already saw the original lemmynsfw get overwhelmed and just want to shut it down and hand it to someone else because they were having to put in so much work.
  Hopefully because Lemmy is opt in in every sense, instance owners can do an ad setup that isn't intrusive or over bearing.
  Otherwise it's just the big instances that are donation covered that stay and grow and Lemmy just becomes centralized around 5 servers or something.
  
  How to fund the instance is up to the instance owner. The one I'm on has a Patreon. Not sure how the bigger ones are managing.
  
  I'd suspect viral advertising to be more likely/prevalent
- Ha same here, it really is like being back on Reddit!
- Made me instinctively downvote (do we still call it that?) before I finally realized what the post was really about XD

God they can't even make the joke right.
- Yea that's honestly worse than begging for advertisers lol
- An inclusive or joke without the or is amazing. They clearly do not understand their users at all if they can't even get one of the most basic recurring jokes right.
- It's Hello Fellow Kids shit, for sure! A swing and a miss lol
- Probably because it wasn't made by an actual reddit user

Having tried to use Reddit advertising for business (a national company), it really wasn’t very good. They had very poor targeting and algorithms.
- I have a family member that runs their company digital advertising strategy. Said the same thing… and that it was hard to track conversions. They ended up pulling their ads.
  
  I work in the digital advertising industry...reddit is pushing hard to grow it's advertising business and are being helped by major players in the industry.
  I've been tracking it for a while, because I know it was foreshadowing the decline of reddit as I knew it
  
  Yup. That was our experience too! My boss and I were both Redditors and we thought it would be cool.
  Narrator: It wasn’t.
- Reddit has attempted, multiple times, to reach out to Andrew Tate to partner with him on advertisements, including twice while he was imprisoned.
  I know this because their numbskull marketing folks can’t proofread the email address they’re sending outreach to, and I received the outreach emails as a result. Thanks, Reddit!
  
  Can you post them? Name and shame.
  
  You need to leak those emails, screw Reddit and u/spez.
  
  Oof. That’s disgusting. Another reason to feel good moving here
- Given how they screwed up new.reddit and can't make a decent app, this doesn't surprise me.
- I took a pitch from a Reddit ad sales rep in May, and he admitted to not really using the site.

It’s fairly reasonable to assume advertisers are leaving. This isn’t one of those controversies that has two sides, it’s just Reddit being shitty because they want to make more money, and mods, users and disabled people on the other side being annoyed with Reddit.
There’s very little for advertisers to lose by redirecting their ad budget elsewhere, but if they stick around there’s a risk that annoyance spills over to them.
It also doesn’t take much for marketing teams to make a change - they do it all the time to stay on the right side of controversies and avoid things they don’t want to be associated with.

That was scary. Thought Lemmy had ads already!!
- I’m fine with ads. It costs money to run servers and build out the platform.
  I’m not fine with the absolutely sleezy way spez handled the api changes and the ridiculous price. Utterly disrespectful to the mods, third party app devs, and Reddit users.
  
  I'd rather we all pay a few bucks to not have lemmy get infested with ads.
  
  Yeah. I just surprised I thought reddit put ads on lemmy 😂
  
  Just because things cost money doesn't mean that ads are the best way to pay for them, or that we have to accept advertising as part of the process. I ABHOR advertising, but I don't mind signing up to support someone on Patreon, like I'm doing with the developer of the instance I'm on.
- I though I've had left.. and then spez tracked me down. Scary stuff indeed.
- I will leave the second it happens. Crazy.
  
  Mmm, I get the ideological stance, but servers do cost money.
  I suppose donations are an option but can't imagine that being a stable source.
- I though I've had left.. and then spez tracked me down. Scary stuff indeed.
- I though I've had left.. and then spez tracked me down. Scary stuff indeed.

If you go to the URL in the ad and click on "get started," you will see something interesting:
An 800 number.
- What's so interesting about the 800 number?
  
  If enough people call it, it costs them money, for starters.
  
  I guess using a phone-line for interact with a website is strange.

Step 1: Announce very unpopular changes Step 2: Ignore backlash, go through with the plan Step 3: Predictably, lose users and advertisers Step 4: ???? Step 5: Why advertise on reddit?
- Them: yes
  
  Lemmy users: No
- Which step is profit?
  
  Underpants!
  
  Ah fuck, back to the drawing board!

Even in their ads for ads they have to get their content from their user base

Watching all this happen in realtime is surreal...
- Pretty wild, isn't it? This is what it felt like when Digg v4 came out.
- It's digg all over again with a dash of tumblr.

I logged in to reddit on my computer the day after rif went dark, and there were noticeably fewer posts on the front page. I think only 8 or so posts were above 10k upvotes. I wouldn't be surprised if advertisers are pulling their ads in response.
- I wvisited to see what it's like, but I didn't log in. Pretty boring place, mostly links from like, CNN, The Guardian, etc. Different subs trending, often with very boring political opinion stuff and sports.
  Advertisers may not notice a difference, sad to say. The people wso stayed are exactly the people they want.
- I've been wondering what is like over there, I hope it's apocalyptic
  
  Honestly? As another user noted, it's just boring. Not nearly as much is getting posted, and the comments are reminiscent of the days when we'd scramble to write "FIRST" in the comment section. It doesn't feel conversational, if that makes sense. Like people are talking at each other, not with them. Also lots of "lol nothing changed, why was everyone making such a big deal?" But then the front page is mostly politics, shitposting, and recycled ask reddit questions. Not a monumental change, but definitely lower in quality, imo.

This is embarrassing.
What a weak revenue stream. Imagine being a business, investing in a subreddit, only for the subreddit to be inundated by bots.
Reddit is going the way of Twitter and it's astounding to watch.
- Reddit post reading limit, when?
  
  When the surviving 3rd party app users hit their limit for API calls you will absolutely get this message and probably an option to upgrade for $$$ too.

You: why eat dog shit.
US : Yes.

Lol would love to see Lemmy ads on Reddit
- NGL the random Sync for Lemmy that landed on my front page might as well have been an ad for Lemmy. I don't even use Sync but it led me here.
  
  Ah nice it’s already happening then, welcome aboard!
- We should crowdfund some Lemmy ads
  
  To post on reddit? Wouldn't that give reddit money? No thanks!
  Also I'm note sure we want to grab more randoms on here 😁 I like the smaller intimate vibe.
- Maybe an ad instance that has to pay to federate with other instances?

Lol you know a website is running out of advertisement because they start promote their own website 😂 lol
- It's like that billboard in the middle of nowhere that ISN'T advertising lions den or pecan shops. Nobody is advertising here because nobody knows it exists!

u/Spez is following Elon's playbook and it might start the downfall of Reddit
- The downfall has already begun. The post quality has decreased severely over the last couple of weeks.
  
  Hell for the past couple years the site has had a significant drop in quality.
  
  I barely remember Digg ITSELF, but this still reminds me of how it FELT when Digg imploded and evacuated to Reddit.
  
  I noticed this too, all of a sudden the subreddits that went dark or were relatively inactive all had like some sort of low tier post on the 31st or the 1st, I'm not sure which day TBH. I figured those were posts from scab mods that took over to see what activity of the subs were.
- Even the sense of humour is the same "how do you do, fellow kids" kind.
- Honestly sort of hope so, and I hope it's swift. I really really wish for Spez to suffer as he has to explain to the shareholders how he has fumbled away all their invested money.
  
  Swift? Nah, let it become the next iFunny.
- CEOs of big social media companies are not that different after all, they all become the same.
  
  Tom from myspace did it right. Got a few hundred million and now just travels the world with his friends taking pictures.
- Bit sad innit. I'll have to start archiving all the useful stuff I've found on reddit.
  
  I hope they archive the whole site. There's allot of info there.
- Users leaving is one thing but making moderation harder? Yea I don't think that's going to work out

First post on the page when I just started using wefwef. Thought I'd been invaded by ads already!

I guess there's a limit to how many ads the He Gets Us people will buy.
- He got us, but no one gets spez.
- Those ads were legit the final straw for me. Bad enough that they fucked over Devs with the API changes.
  But making me pay you $7 a month or whatever to not show me ads from hate groups? Fuuuuuuck that.
  I hope Reddit sinks.

Thought it was a sponsored post here on Lemmy.
Thanks, I hate it.
- Lol
  This comment reply is brought to you Sofa King Mattresses. Our mattresses aren't just good, they're Sofa King Good!

🤢

Ran out of advertisers, Why? Because we made some really "great" decisions at reddit!

Strong "Hello fellow kids" vibe

That's pretty fucking pathetic. Reddit for business my hairy ass.
- Jumping on here to advertise my hairy ass too
  
  Well?? Tell us some of its merits at least.

What is it supposed to mean?
- It means "Yes, that is the correct question to ask. Really think it through because we don't have an answer for you."
- Supposed to go like
  How many redditors do you want to piss off and quit your platform?
  Spaz: Yes
- Yes.
- It means "Yes, that is the correct question to ask. Really think it through because we don't have an answer for you."

I keep seeing this as well. Probably the most frequent ad I've seen.

I went back once on the official app and it was good awful. It was like watching broadcast TV, so watery.

I can confirm: the audience is not there

I though I was going crazy for a second and I thought I went back in time and I was on Reddit via Apollo
- Sometimes I have that thought when using Wefwef
- I'm new here. Thought I got an ad for reddit on Lemmy, I made an ugly face.

Reddit is always hitting itself. Cause if they turn back the changes now, they'll still have lost the trust of mods and users (it's too late for it now, we're past that point)
- Yeo, sunken cost fallacy.

You shouldn't want to be seeing it. Turn your adblock on and don't give them revenue.

This hurts my brain.

They really thought that meme was appropriate.
But here it is, being posted, so maybe it worked?
- Sure more people know about it. Does it make people do what they want? That's another question.

Yesn't

Why advertise on reddit?
Yes.
And they wonder why they don't have any advertiser support...

I've been using the official app and reporting and blocking all the ads. This post triggered my block response.
- I’ve been using the official app INFIDEL