Those are not avatars. Those are...yeah...not avatars in the way that the author of the article meant. Another thing that we aren't factoring in is the dedication you have to give to successfully win reddit. That money can be spent on ads...or gaming the frontpage...but either way it has to be a bit more than "Hey mr. designer in India..here's our logo...here's our styleguide...here's the headlines we want to use....I need 25 variations of banner ads @ 728x90, 300x250, etc." Those ads are then used across the board on any website. Those ads can be re-used in 3 months, 6 months, a year. You can email Mr. Designer again and do a whole new set of retargeting ads. Once a campaign has been set, it can be reused and repurposed for everything. Your TV ads end up as YouTube prerolls. Your magazine add gets squished and de-whitedspace'd. It takes very little thought after "here's the campaign copy." With reddit, you really have to have a dedicated campaign for reddit. I agree with all else you said though. I wonder if there are any case studies online regarding people who have ventured into reddit advertising.ORLY
Mmmm.... from a perspective of mile-high journalism, "avatar" is a good shorthand for what Reddit is trying to do. - Snoovatars - Trophy chests - Flair - high scores Without getting into the minutiae of Reddit's bizarre incentivization, "avatar" gets the point across. Oh, honey... /r/lounge runs comps. "Who can get 100k karma in a day." "Who can get 200k comment karma in two days." "Who can get an image to the top of /r/movies by 2pm." Reddit is stupendously easy to game and when you can get $2k worth of traffic for free, people will try. I've been working on an f'ing campaign for Alpine for four weeks now. The broadcast spots have been up for 2 weeks. A semi-talented epidemiologist/marketer could have had Alpine all over Reddit for that entire time without so much as firing up Premiere. And yeah - you have to give that special attention. But everyone is giving it special attention.Another thing that we aren't factoring in is the dedication you have to give to successfully win reddit.