Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed

Reddit has made it clear that it’s an ad-first business. Today, it expanded on that practice with a new ad format that looks to sell things to Reddit users. Simultaneously, Reddit has marketers who are interested in pushing products to users through seemingly legitimate accounts.

 

In a blog post today, Reddit announced that its Dynamic Product Ads are entering public beta globally. The ad format uses "shopping signals," aka discussions with people looking to try a product or brand, machine learning, and advertiser product catalogs in order to post relevant ads. Reddit shared an image in the blog post that shows ads, including with products and pricing, that seem to relate to a posted question. User responses to the Reddit post appear under the ad.

Reddit's Dynamic Product Ads can automatically show users ads "based on the products they’ve previously engaged with on the advertiser’s site" and/or "based on what people engage with on Reddit or advertiser sites," per the blog.

Reddit is an ad business

Reddit's blog didn't imply that Dynamic Product Ads means users would see more ads than they do currently. However, today's blog highlighted the newly public company's focus on ad sales.

 

“With Dynamic Product Ads, brands can tap into the rich, high-intent product conversations that people come to Reddit for," Reddit EVP of Business Marketing and Growth Jim Squires said in a statement.

 

The blog also noted that "Reddit's communities are naturally commercial," adding:

 

Reddit is where people come to make shopping decisions, and we’re focused on bringing brands into these interactions in a way that adds value for people and drives growth for businesses.

The stance has been increasingly clear over the past year, as Reddit became rather vocal about the fact that it's never been profitable. In June, the company started charging for API access, resulting in numerous valued third-party Reddit apps closing and messy user protests that left a bad taste in countless long-time users' and moderators' mouths. While Reddit initially announced the change as a way to prevent large language models from using its data for free training, it was also seen as a way to drive users to Reddit's website and mobile app, where it can serve users ads.

 

Per Reddit's February SEC filing (PDF), ads made up 98 percent of Reddit's revenues in 2023 and 2022. That filing included a note from CEO Steve Huffman, saying: "Advertising is our first business" and that Reddit's ad business is "still in the early phases of growing."

 

In September, the company started preventing users from opting out of personalized ads. In June, Reddit introduced a new tool to advertisers that uses natural language processing to look through Reddit user comments for keywords that signal potential interest for a brand.

 

Reddit's blog post today hinted at some future evolutions focused on showing Reddit users ads, including "tools and features such as new shopping ads formats like collection ads that enhance the shopper experience while driving performance" and "merchant platform integrations that welcome smaller merchants."

For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts

As Reddit continues to promote ad sales, other companies are trying to sell ads on Reddit, too. It's no secret that social media sites are a prime target for spam, and Reddit isn't an outlier. However, a recent report from 404 Media provides an interesting look at some of the ways spam bots are trying to sneak ad dollars away from Reddit.

 

"Don’t Pay for Reddit Ads, Twitter Ads, or LinkedIn Ads Until You’ve Tried This," a blog post on social media AI bot ReplyGuy reads. As reported on by 404 Media on Tuesday, ReplyGuy claims to use "high quality" Reddit and X (formerly Twitter) accounts to write AI-generated responses that seem like they could be genuine responses from an unbiased social media user but are actually paid-for plugs.

 

ReplyGuy says it works on Reddit and X and is "adding support for LinkedIn, TikTok, Hacker News, and other social networks.”

 

A video on ReplyGuy's website shows a customer inputting their company's name and website before the platform suggests keywords for the bot to know "what types of subreddits and tweets to look for and when to respond.”

 

Below are purported screenshots from Reddit shared on ReplyGuy's website, claiming to show paid-for, AI-generated responses to legitimate Reddit queries:

 

"We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don't usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search," ReplyGuy's website reads.

 

Reddit, including volunteer moderators and other users, has fought similar spam efforts for years. It's unclear how much of an impact ReplyGuy specifically has had on Reddit. When reached for comment, a Reddit spokesperson told Ars that ReplyGuy, as described by 404 Media, would be considered spam or another form of content manipulation and be removed. 404 Media noted that most of the Reddit accounts that ReplyGuy has shown off on its website and social media platforms were banned before the article was published.

 

Reddit's rep also noted that the company uses automated tooling and humans to identify spam. Automation-based spam detection methods include using various content and behavioral signals, as well as looking for vote manipulation patterns and untrusted URLs. Moderators also have Reddit-provided tools, like Automoderator, for spam detection.

 

But ReplyGuy isn't the first and won't be the last to try to use AI bots and/or paid-for accounts to push products on Reddit. The person behind ReplyGuy, for example, announced a similar business, Stealth Marketing, this month. While ads on Reddit purchased through third parties can be significantly more misleading than the ads Reddit sells that are labeled as promoted, the trend of making ads blend in more with regular Reddit discussions is one Reddit is also part of through its Free-Form Ads introduced in March:

 

 

That said, the amount of content removed from Reddit by its admins due to spam has reportedly dropped since 2022, when it represented 79.6 percent of removals, according to the company's own Transparency Report. From January to June 2023, spam reportedly represented 78.6 percent of removals, and in the latter half of 2023, 67.7 percent. (Reddit's most recent, previous Transparency Reports didn't provide these same figures.)

 

Reddit's goal of growing its ad business, though, means Redditors should expect to see more ads on the platform, whether purchased through Reddit or through some well-crafted bots.

 

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder of Reddit.