Social News Advertising

I discovered Reddit two years ago during my first year of college. I had heard of it, but wasn’t really sure of what it was. You can only be elbow nudged so many times before having to find out what it’s all about.

For the ignorant, Reddit isn’t social media. It’s more social news sharing. You can lurk and browse anonymously, or sign up for free which allows you to post and vote on content, take part in discussions, or wait for OP to deliver. The whole lot.

Unlike social media, Reddit doesn’t do very much advertising. Do you believe that? A free-to-use website that doesn’t fill its sidebar with annoying web ads. In fact, the only ads that are displayed are mostly big box ads promoting Reddit Gold — the membership program that leaves your page free of the few ads, and some out-of-Reddit perks. Not something worth bragging over.

A cool feature about those ads is that below each one, Reddit allows you to “discuss this ad” which takes you to /r/ads/, where users can complain or praise any ad Reddit uses.

On Reddit, the complaints over advertisements are minimal or non-exsistent. They don’t talk to you, play you lame music or pop up into your web grill. It’s our web ad dream.

Yet having a familiarity with online communities, and the dinks of the Internet (see Youtube comments if you aren’t following), we know there are people to complain about even the slightest advertising.

Every now and then companies will sign up as an undercover user and consumer and post something about the brand — always something positive. Most of us are fooled and our view of that brand changes mildly. A marketing job well done. But not all of Reddit is an easy target. Within the hour of posting, someone is calling bullshit. At this point a string of comments unleash, feeding off one another usually bashing the brand. A marketing disaster. There is one in particular however that was called out, but didn’t receive a negative return.

With recent buzz for the Anchorman sequel, we’ve seen Ron Burgundy (not Will Ferrell, Ron Burgundy) starring in ads, popping up on sport shows, selling holiday hams and just being plain weird.

Earlier this week, the sub-reddit /r/funny/ saw a picture of Ron Burgundy standing on a street corner in Milford Connecticut holding a box of Dunken Donuts and a 40 of his favorite scotchy scotch scotch. Before long /u/nwsreddit/ commented:

Powerhouse marketing. I'm not even kidding, it is impressive. 0 post, OP's account was made today and I don't think that's a coincidence.

Heck I still think this is good content. The pic is funny and the comments are probably gonna be pretty good. This gets to the top and everybody wins. Seems like there must be some companies out there that have got this DOWN.

Almost immediately after, OP (original poster, by the way) admitted he’d/she’d been caught:
You got us! Don't forget to see Anchorman 2 December 25th! And go see A Black Nativity too! We didn't make that one but, come on, they're going to need some help.

The jig was up yet nobody cared. Because Redditors, before realizing they’ve been targeted by a Reddit-savvy marketer, laughed, enjoyed, and engaged with the content.

­It’s not just Reddit where marketers and advertisers need to deliver content to engage audiences. We need to stop thinking of it as marketing and advertising, but instead as social news sharing.