Ad works differently than normal post. Even if your post make it to the front page, it will only be displayed once. Also, it mean the user either need to be looking at r/all or popular, or be subscribed to the subreddit.

Ad are display several time per page and will be display whatever subreddit the user is currently on.

There's a good reason why podcast hosts read the ad copy. Even if an advert is obviously an advert - if it comes from a trusted source it's still more effective. The adverts which are astro-turfed as real posts are more effective simply because they seem to be endorsed by the community you're a part of.

It also isn't legal throughout most of the western world so it is a pretty risky thing to be doing. Saying that no one has cracked down on the youtube channels that repeatedly do it nor websites that have been utilising it for 15 years so I guess it is pretty hard to start prosecuting now, it won't be Reddit that shows the necessity of applying that law.

There actually has been enforcement: https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/mondelez-uk-ltd-a14-275018.ht...

But the best kind of ad is the kind the enduser doesn't realize is an ad. Not to mention that cross-posting happens all the time so your "ad" can make it all over the site for a day or so. And if it goes viral enough on reddit, it'll inevitably be picked up by a multitude of websites built around leaching content from reddit. Obviously there's no guarantee that it'll work any given time, but try it enough over a span of time and I can see how it would be more effective than traditional advertisements.

It's why Facebook ads look identical to posts at a glance. If you don't know it's an ad, you're more likely to click it, share it, like it, etc.

but everyone blocks ads and buying upvotes is extremely cheap

Yeah, I think the article actually mentions this subtly when it talks about "machine learning tools that recognize suspicious or badly behaved accounts". Sure that'll hopefully catch some russian trying to sow discord, but I'll bet you it's mostly to combat the upvote-farms, so their own offering becomes better by comparison.

I would sure like to advertise but (a) their ad manager is amateurish, and (b) they don't allow anything related to cryptocurrency.

cause buying upvotes would not work at scale and you take the risk to get busted for doing that.

Busted how though? It's not like McDonalds, for example, would use a Mc-branded account to post random things to reddit with clearly visible McDonald cups or whatever. They'd use some throwaway account or buy an established account and buy upvotes to target that account's post. Reddit has no way to punish them for that. Maybe the reddit users find out and get pissed, but the site has no attention span and they'll forget and move on in a week.

I get your point but do you think that massive brands like McDonalds would take this path to show you a hidden ads about their brand. no. They can pay millions to blast you their McDonalds cups on TV ads. When these kind of companies want to start to put ads on a new media they have 6 or 7 figures budget. They don't give a damn about paying a 100USD gig to have their McDonalds cups's post on the front page for 3 hours. They want their McDonalds cups on the front page ALL the time.

Why wouldn't they though? Astroturfing gets around adblockers entirely and reaches those who are ad-adverse because they don't necessarily realize it's an ad. It's nothing new either, it's just the internet equivalent of sitcoms having name brand products visible (and "coincidentally" turned turned so the logo faces the camera) during the show or "I, Robot" having "retro" chucks featured prominently (although obviously way more subtle than that).

My assumption is that McDonalds pays advertising companies to put ads together and distribute them. Why wouldn't they throw a couple hundred bucks at a few low-key ads in a few reddit posts. Doesn't take that many people to buy McDonalds before it pays for itself.

Also, everybody does it. Every major brand already has many thousands of followers with questionable names in clearly irrelevant locations, and this on a platform where such shenanigans are visible to everyone.

There's no reason to believe upvotes, which are less visible to other users, are bought at lesser scale.

When everybody does it, it's hard to single out any one actor as bad.