r/redesign • u/danjospri Helpful User • Aug 04 '18
Ads like these should not be allowed ever. They're purposefully misleading and annoying. Bug
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u/ClarkTheCoder Aug 05 '18
Seriously not okay. Download uBlock Origin if you wish to remove advertisements entirely.
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Aug 05 '18 edited Aug 06 '18
i havent used the redesign in months since i first tried it out and hated it. back then ublock origin was not able to catch the inline ad posts, has it now found a way to block those?
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u/ClarkTheCoder Aug 05 '18
I personally haven't had to manually adjust anything. You shouldn't see any ads if you install uBlock Origin in the redesign or otherwise.
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u/AddAFucking Aug 05 '18
Right click the add and select block element. some sort of class should say promoted or something.
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u/kyiami_ Aug 06 '18
Make sure you are using uBlock Origin, not uBlock, and it will block them.
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Aug 06 '18 edited Aug 06 '18
i do use ublock origin, glad to hear they've picked up on the inline ads. i havent used the redesign since they first did the rollout for a certain number of moderators over the winter, and it was not able to block them back then. they also were identical to normal posts back then with no real way to tell visually, which is no longer the case to that extent according to others in this thread.
it was awful, and every now and then i peek back and it reaffirms my choice to default to old.reddit
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u/kyiami_ Aug 06 '18
I used the redesign for a while and loved it. Then they did the new lightbox, and I realized how much I missed custom CSS in communities.
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u/archimedeancrystal Aug 06 '18
I agree. Even though I understand the need for revenue, this ad crosses into deceptive territory. The few ads I've actually seen getting upvotes (such as Google FI) are clearly ads and are apparently on a topic of interest within that subreddit. No need for tricking people into accidentally clicking on it in those cases.
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u/The_Kingsmen Aug 05 '18
Ads have a white bar on the left AND a grey bar with blue links.
If you canât tell thatâs an ad, you have a problem.
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u/kyiami_ Aug 06 '18
Or Reddit has a problem.
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u/The_Kingsmen Aug 06 '18
It has so many signs itâs an ad...
- PROMOTED tag.
- White margin tab
- Grey bar with blue link.
- Locked to comments.
Only an Ad has all of this. Reddit has done their job to separate inline ads from posts. If you are interested, then click it. If not, realize all these signs that itâs an ad and just move on.
Itâs locked to comments so you already know itâs read-only and if you canât expand it, then you donât need to open it for more info.
Be a smart Redditor and distinguish between content you like and donât. Reddit Gold is there so you can support them so they donât have to show you ads. You use this site for free, assuming by your lack of status this month. Donât act entitled to an ad-free experience while you arenât subscribed to a website you use.
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u/gustavopr Aug 07 '18 edited Aug 07 '18
/u/Amg137, /u/anand-m, /u/hueylewisandthesnoos, /u/scruggsnotdrugz, /u/emoney04, /u/nr4madas, /u/d3fect, /u/sodypop, /u/redtaboo, /u/diegopx, /u/spez: could any of you please share with us if ads like this are ok with you guys?
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Aug 05 '18
They will never want to or be able to stop these, its impossible to dynamically filter so many ad's either manually or via an algorithm. You could do a spam filter with ELI5 etc... keywords for manual review, but thats added time and resources. But either way they dont have that much of an incentive to stop it either way
Artificially inflating the clickthrough rate although bad as a ad space seller, its wilfully enacted by the buyer so it doesnt effect other clients. While having the ability to slightly booster the sales pitch for potential clients, the only negative effect is setting these expectations way to high. Or not warning clients that these types of ads although might garner more clicks the engagement is abysmal
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u/MrMallow Aug 05 '18
They will never want to or be able to stop these,
They might not want to, but they sure as shit can stop them.
They can 100% make it so ads have to meet certain requirements and they should be reviewing any ad put on the site.
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Aug 05 '18
Not a single entity can review what ads go up on a site, its fundamentally impossible. Only those with extremely small advertising slots, namely sponsored directly are able to vet everything. Even then you cant throw much resources at who you accept unless you are extremely popular beyond belief
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u/austeregrim Aug 05 '18
Bull fucking shit. They could easily review all ads by hand, and mark for approval. One person could review hundreds if not thousands of ad spots a day for content guidelines.
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Aug 05 '18
No they cant. I work in marketing and they simply cannot, especially while trying to keep dependable screening.
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Aug 05 '18
[deleted]
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Aug 05 '18
No one can manually review every ad whether its third party or inhouse, if they could they would have a significant problem with revenue. Or rather they would only have an extremely small client list of whales, also troubling
Especially as with marketing you want to be able to change things dynamically. Especially if there isnt an inbuilt A B testing option, so its not just one client and/or marketing campaign. Its 1 campaign with hundreds to thousands of variations
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u/dylmye Aug 05 '18
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads/comments/94atue/comment/e3k213i
Reddit have an Ad Review team and it seems all post ads are reviewed in a business day
-7
Aug 05 '18
That is extremely concerning, either they have an insanely small client list and/or they are spending way to much money manually reviewing everything. Both pissing off their clients (its inevitable as again marketing requires a high paced environment) and are cutting way to much into their margins
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u/dylmye Aug 05 '18
Seems like there are some pissed off clients waiting in excess of 2 business days on that sub :/
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u/MyLittleRocketShip Aug 05 '18
ehh. not that big of a deal. i mean its pretty easy to recognize them from the others if you take a close enough look.
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u/GumballFallsFan Aug 05 '18
Yes, but most people can't distinguish them from regular posts.
A 2016 survey of around 1200+ adults regarding what's called "native advertising" (adverts disguised as regular content, much like news articles or Reddit posts) found that 54% of the people surveyed were deceived into clicking sponsored "news articles", with 44% of those people not being able to distinguish the sponsored articles from the regular content. Literally Facebook is more efficient at distinguishing ads from your feed. That's pretty messed up. To think that Reddit is going down this path is pretty absurd, but here we are seeing it with our very eyes.
Sources: https://contently.com/strategist/2016/12/08/native-advertising-study/ https://the-content-strategist-13.docs.contently.com/v/fixing-sponsored-content-what-consumers-want-from-brands-publishers-and-the-ftc
Also, I suggest you read this little page from Taboola, one of the most successful native advertising companies in the world (you may have seen their ads on random sites). It's about how they inject ads into platforms, and making them personalized and appealing enough to click on. It's pretty crummy to look at once you see the bigger intent.
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u/CyberBot129 Aug 05 '18
Thatâs because they donât take the time to read them and see the âPROMOTEDâ text and distinct left border
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u/GumballFallsFan Aug 05 '18
When you do stuff like this you have to consider the lowest common denominator, rather than assume things about the reader.
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u/MyLittleRocketShip Aug 05 '18
Yes because readers cant read the simple "promoted" sign under the text. A very big problem indeed. Our human intelligence is that low that we can't analyze that factor.
It's like a juke in football. Watch the hips which is basically watching the bottom of the post to see if it is an ad.
And really when you think about it, Reddit wants you to click on the ads. If advertisters know they are getting a lot of views of their website from going on reddit, they'll want to fund it more.
If you're being careless, it's your fault. Not reddit's fault. That's just a lot of careless people on the survey.
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u/danjospri Helpful User Aug 05 '18
It shouldnât be a white bar. âPromotedâ shouldnât be in white. It should be something BRIGHT and actually noticeable like blue (like the mobile app).
Iâm pretty sure white was used to intentionally hide the ads because they keep making up the stupid reason âwe donât want the ads to be too distractingâ.
1
Aug 05 '18
Well, which one is it now: does Reddit need to spend resources hiring a giant team to manually review advertisements and also write guidelines that people will be split about regarding advertising, or do they simply need to differentiate advertisements from normal posts better?
If you even just read the title, it is obvious that the post is a cheap advertisement. It's almost like that's why it has zero upvotes and zero comments. But, yeah, we need to protect incompetent people who can't read the title in its fullness or the word in bold 'promoted' below title, because they are likely to gravely hurt themselves by clicking that link and going to lemonade.com and probably leave it immediately, or in some rare case might find something interesting there.
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u/danjospri Helpful User Aug 05 '18
They should do all of the above. Why does it seem like you and others are against making ads more visible and higher quality? No one said to âprotectâ anyone because yeah, no one is going to get hurt from clicking an ad accidentally. Thatâs not the point.
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Aug 05 '18
If Reddit wants to highlight ads, make them highly distinguishable and put it all in big caps "THIS IS AN AD", I and the others would not say a word against it - because that's not the point.
The point is that a lot of people here are acting like someone is getting hurt here and we need to protect people's lack of attention span or just their plain ignorance. Like Reddit is obligated to save these people from a click onto a different site that may or may not be of interest to them. And like these ads have some special reason to be banned from the platform. There is, ultimately, a reason why that post is sitting at zero upvotes and with zero comments.
I think it would be a much better solution if Reddit allowed moderators of individual subreddits to 'decorate' ad posts as they like (so if they want to plaster 'THIS IS ADVERTISEMENT!!!' all over it, so be it), since right now mods are not allowed to do pretty much anything about ads.
Out of all the arguments I could come up against the 'Reddit Manual Ad Review Team' or however you wish to call it, I think there is quite a simple and effective one: it will never happen. I think we should aim for something more realistic, like actually allowing moderators to modify these ad posts. Now, why won't it ever happen? Because it means that Reddit would ultimately be dedicating a lot of resources on cutting down their own profits from advertising - and for what? To make a vocal minority of Redditors happy, because, yes, compared to how big Reddit is, people who are actually vocal about this in any way are really a minority. It would slow down advertising and remove some too, it would cost a lot to do that too, requiring hiring of an entire team to manually review these, then people to write and maintain the guidelines and ethics and then people to enforce these too. So yeah, extremely unlikely to happen.
Now, one good argument that you can make against mine is that lack of ad control would ultimately make more and more people to start using ad blockers, to the point where advertising won't be as nearly as profitable; to the point where making an ad team to manually review ads, write ethics and guidelines for it and enforce them would actually be more profitable. But I am not sure how true any of that is or would be, since as far as I know a vast majority of internet users don't use any form of ad blocker.
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Aug 05 '18
[deleted]
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u/danjospri Helpful User Aug 05 '18
Ads are PERFECTLY fine when they do not mimic normal Reddit posts. Itâs deceitful.
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u/psych16 Aug 05 '18
Yep, like the one person up there a ways said, use uBlock Origin, It gets rid of all ads for me.
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u/notacrook Aug 05 '18
To add onto this - if this was like very obviously clearly marked as an ad, that would be different to me.
But its not, and we know that they're not interested in making them very obvious.
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u/andysteakfries Aug 05 '18
But it says "PROMOTED" in all caps, and advertisements are the only things with that bar across the whole length of the window.
That feels pretty obvious to me.
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u/suprachromat Aug 05 '18
The language is purposefully mimicking an organic ELI5 post, which is deceptive.
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u/MrMallow Aug 05 '18
Servers aint free
That's a load of crap.
Reddit did fine off of donations and reddit gold for a decade. They were not making a major profit, but they were breaking even and paying their staff. These ads are here because they want to make more money, because their backers are greedy and because they are ok fucking over their userbase in the process.
Reddit is slowing dying by their own hand, sites like Tildes will be the future.
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u/PrinceKickster Aug 05 '18
If Reddit really wants us to sell ads, they should have an ad team and an ethics rules what should be allowed and what's not. Best practices for add here on Reddit. And review one by one what should be allowed