Reddit launches ad targeting product based on site visits

Reddit user? The social news site has an update for you.

Earlier this week, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman made an announcement that may have folks dropping their jaws and advertisers rejoicing: Reddit will now not just support subreddit ad targeting, an offering provided for quite awhile — it’s broadening out to interest targeting, which is, as Huffman says, targeting “audiences based on a handful of predefined interests (e.g., sports, gaming, music and more) which will be informed by which communities they frequent.” The benefit is a better experience, both for the user (not a boring, irrelevant and uninteresting ad) and advertiser (Hey, this guy might actually be interested in my product).

Interestingly enough, Reddit caters to a pretty big demographic of ad-haters, so Huffman has allowed users to opt out of this new ad product — but the alternative would be that the ads aren’t as interesting, and perhaps that’s not a more ideal medium.

Regardless, reception in the comments of the Reddit announcement seem positive, with typical reactions of “it’s an improvement” to worries about tracking, something that may be unavoidable after a few more years. It’ll be interesting to see how Reddit increases revenue from the usage of the product — anything that makes for a better user experience should eventually win favor with users.