Calling them “free-form ads,” Reddit said the new advertisements are its most native format ever, designed to look and feel like community content shared by real people.
The ads, meant to mimic the site’s megathreads, will enable advertisers to utilize a variety of formats in one post, including images, videos, and text.
According to numbers from Reddit, free-form ads got 28% more clicks than all other types of ads on the site and saw a jump in community engagement.
The next time you see an interesting post in your Reddit feed, take a closer look - because it might just be a paid advertisement.
I think what YouTube does would be sufficient. There’s a noticeably different video progress bar colour (yellow instead of red) and a large “Skip Ad in __” in the corner, plus the advertiser information on the side.
Reddit could do this by putting a “Paid advertisement” watermark in the corner or putting “Advert” where the upvote/downvote buttons are and colouring it some noticeable colour, like yellow, and I would be satisfied with that.