A clever company or marketing agency can just disguise advertisements as genuine posts. If I'm a pencil company, I'll just create my own username and visit those subreddits on the downlow and casually mention my products. There's no need to ever pay Reddit.

You realize you have to pay an employee to do that right? Odds are it’s still more cost effective to just buy ads.

"Organic" advertising though, the current big thing. It's the word-of-mouth from internet strangers. Supposedly converts better.

How do you go about trying to track the conversion rate on organic advertising-cum-Reddit post? It seems like it'd be impossible without the consent of Reddit.

You would use different metrics. It costs nothing to make the post so you can just pump them out, you don't need to use impressions as a metric anymore because you're not paying for impressions. Instead you get good at curating titles, images and articles that gain traction on the site. This isn't a wild idea, it's all over the reddit frontpage every day.

I don't understand the meaning of saying an employee is paid to do that. You might also pay a marketing agency to do it. The point is, Reddit doesn't get paid. As someone who uses Reddit everyday, I never see their ads, but I do notice posts that mention specific brands, websites, companies, etc.

the same can be said for instagram. it's called social media presence and it different than advertising.

On Instagram the poster matters, on Reddit the poster does not. This means it's completely different. A random made-up user on Instagram will have no audience, a random made-up user on Reddit will. Additionally, Instagram has an opportunity to form a relationship with the popular users and can control their accounts in specific if it wishes.

> what better platform is there for a pencil company to advertise than /r/calligraphy

aren't only hardcore pencil users are on /r/calligraphy and weak targets for persuasion via advertising.

I would rather target dabblers not hardcore users who already know which pencil is the best.

The issue is the audience for calligraphy and every other niche subreddit is tiiiny if you're a serious advertiser.

Facebook allows you to target anyone who has shown interest in calligraphy and not just those who follow a subreddit. I’ve played with it and Facebook targeting is both disturbingly detailed and disturbingly large in coverage.