What could change now?
It’s common for community-focused internet start-ups to struggle with balancing monetisation and community engagement, said Mr Li Jianggan, CEO of tech venture builder Momentum Works.
He pointed to China’s video-sharing platform Bilibili as an example that has “suffered big time” since its IPO.
While Reddit has an older and more limited format compared to other community-centred platforms like Discord and Pinterest, it “surprisingly has attracted and retained a young audience”.
Three monetisation strategies were highlighted in the Reddit prospectus.
Currently, ads are displayed on the site’s “home” and “popular” feeds, and on community threads.
Ads in comment threads and search pages, as well as video ads, have been identified as potential future opportunities.
Reddit also wants to use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict user engagement with ads and expand ad reach, as well as to track conversion (actions that consumers take after interacting with an ad).
These help to deliver and show return on investment, which could in turn help attract more advertisers.
Prof Crystal pointed out that in Singapore, local influencers are intentional about tying up ads with their personal backstories.
“So content, as opposed to just ads for ads’ sake, is something that Singaporeans are more forgiving towards,” she said.
“If you’re talking about Reddit just posting ads and interrupting our experience … that’s not going to be very, very helpful.”
Reddit has started allowing third parties to access user-generated data, for purposes including training large language models for AI. The US Federal Trade Commission is looking into these AI-related deals.
Another potential purpose is data targeting, where companies take the demographic information of users to tailor content and ads, as outlined above.
One of Reddit’s features is that users are pseudonymous, so the community is not bound by its members having “a singular, coherent, long-term user identity and chain”, Prof Crystal said.
A “throwaway culture” also exists, where individuals have several handles, sometimes in order to “safely and actively participate in conversations that may be frowned upon in Singapore”.
Parts of this could be compromised in the name of more effective data targeting.
Prof Crystal pointed to Facebook, which implemented a real-name system in 2014. But she also noted that this would not necessarily be the case with Reddit.
“It’s just that you have to now be loyal and committed to the one account … which is probably going to be off-putting to a lot of Singaporeans who are already familiar with tabbing,” or the practice of switching between different accounts, she said.
National University of Singapore Associate Professor Natalie Pang pointed out that advertisers will want to know who they’re reaching and targeting. Marketplaces also cannot function without a form of identification.
But she said it would also be possible to target ads based on topical interests and locations already identified through subreddits.
Source: CNA
