Re:Condé Nast Spins Out Reddit, Without Letting Go
by _delirium on Tuesday September 06, 2011 @04:35PM
(#2967186)
That's what happened with the old kuro5hin ads also, which also had comment threads by default. Non-annoying ads that seemed like they had some idea of what community they were targeting typically got good responses; annoying ads that looked like they had no idea where they were advertising didn't. Of course, some advertisers mixed the two, and deliberately antagonized the audience to get attention (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/12/5/1923/79187).
But thats all it is. They're on a website where the community actively discusses their opinion of submissions, and it was their opinion that the ad or advertized product wasn't good.
I haven't been to reddit in a while, but when I did, I saw that when an advertiser had a good product (I'm recalling A Small Orange or rsync.net) and understood that they didn't need patronizing or dumb ads, the comments were mostly inquiring about the service, or users saying they were happy with it.