We had the complete opposite experience - we ran a tiny ad buy when the platform had just opened up, and the effect was amazing. The community embraced us and for years afterwards, people shared it in comment threads throughout reddit.
You have to make something they want, and you have to engage with them in the comments section as a redditor. If they feel pandered to, it's going to backfire. I see a lot of ads on there that seem like try-hard pandering.
It's certainly more difficult to use well than most ad platforms, especially for bigger companies.
> It's certainly more difficult to use well than most ad platforms, especially for bigger companies.
I think this is going to be a big issue. Large advertisers want reach, not hyper-targeting a tiny sub with 3,000 subscribers.
While you can certainly make something that would appeal to, say, /r/edmproduction, would a large advertiser like P&G be able to create something for default subs (that have huge reach)?
I agree that it's going to be a big issue for Reddit if it wants to be a multi billion dollar company. If, on the other hand, it wanted to be a community site that pays to keep the servers running, it wouldn't be a problem.
That said, our ads weren't targeted at a sub, and they worked well.
And I say this as a heavy user of the site who knows exactly what kind of content formats work best on it.