Saturday, January 03, 2009

Sponsored Links on reddit

You may have noticed over the past few weeks the occasional appearance of Sponsored Links in the New Links box at the top of reddit's front page. This is a new method of advertising that we think is a better fit for reddit than other more traditional approaches. Sponsored Links will have a blue background color and will say "Sponsored Link" in the corner to make it clear the link was not submitted from the community.

Just like with regular submissions, you can vote, comment on*, and hide individual sponsored links.

When we originally added the New Links feature it was to ensure that all submitted links received enough attention to have a fair shot at reaching our front page, and it has been working quite well for the past few months. Although we are going to occasionally display ads in this box, its primary purpose will remain the same, and the vast majority of page-views will be to highlight new and upcoming links.

We realize users often have animosity toward ads, but they are a fact of life on the web. We care very much about the user's experience when reading reddit, and we think this approach to advertising is much more reasonable than what you might see elsewhere online. Our hope is that we can both improve our advertisers' experience on reddit without diluting yours.

Thank you for reading and happy redditing!

* They advertiser can opt out if they want, but you all have never had a problem making your opinions heard...
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