Ahead of IPO, Reddit blends advertising into user posts as FTC starts asking questions about that mega-deal with Google to train AI

Blaze@dormi.zone to Reddit@lemmy.world – 269 points –
Pre-IPO Reddit lets ads be dressed up as promoted user posts
theregister.com
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Ok this part made me snarf:

When comments are enabled on free-form ads, there's an increase in community engagement, Reddit claimed, without indicating whether that increase was positive or not.

I remember a long time ago, like maybe a decade or more, the regular we-can-see-they're-ads ads on Reddit could have comments enabled if the ad buyer wanted. I remember jumping in on a few of them and they actually weren't bad, at least in the ones I went into (a biased sample to be sure). If the ads weren't obnoxious or misleading I could see it going not too badly.

At some point adblock got good enough that I stopped seeing ads on Reddit any more, though, so I don't know when they stopped that practice.

Advertisers stopped enabling it around the time it became mostly "MeUndies", "HeGetsUs" and "kraft" ads.

A long time ago the only ads on reddit were for communities inside itself.

I remember reddit was the only exception in my block rules.

Yeah I never understood that. Was it just to drive engagement? Were the moderators paying for those?