Steve from Reddit announced Wednesday on the Reddit Blog that Wired & Reddit will be adding advertising to the Reddit interface.
Part of the reason reddit was acquired was so that eventually it could be used to sell advertising….We’ve always held that content is our #1 priority, and that isn’t changing. Towards that end, we’ve specifically asked for ads with no moving parts, and we’re not rearranging any content to make room for them.
Plus, I think we found a way to track the ads so we can let you vote/comment on them.
The ability to vote on ads will be a breath of fresh air, if it does not backfire, for Reddit – say the users vote negatively for all of the ads.
Reddit’s largest competitor and Google AdSense partner, Digg.com, has not integrated advertising into their “Digg” and “Bury” model, probably for the same reasons. Instead, Digg blasts banners and box ads above and to the right of their content.
Other social sites have experimented with alternative forms of advertising which add to their community appeal.
ThreadWatch, the SEO blog community, started serving interactive advertising in posts where readers and community members could comment on the products advertised. This model never really worked as well as TW (under previous ownership) had expected due to the honesty of the comments – both positive & negative.
ThreadWatch’s idea did however lead to the launch of other alternative forms of ads, such as the now defunct Performancing ad network and the paid review model used by ReviewMe.
A more recent and successful form of alternative 2.0 advertising are the sponsors at TechMeme, where the advertiser blogs and blog posts are featured on the site, instead of simply a link to the advertiser homepage. The sponsored posts, differentiated by background colors and full disclosure, have however brought about controversy since sometimes they appear listed with regular content.
More coverage on Reddit Advertising:
