Or just force API users to publish ads the same way they publish normal threads.
I've used the old.reddit site and ads don't really bother me. On the other hand I've often found the solution to a problem on Google pointing to a Reddit post.
There are multiple solutions. This is one of them. Another one would be a bring your own api key and as a user be able to pay. Another one would be to serve ads in the feed for 3rd party api access and make it mandatory thay ads are not filtered out. Yet another one is to work w/ the 3rd party apps to display the ads.
Reddit is just a dumb corpo that doesn't understand why they have success. Watch them backpedal hard.
Too hard to display their ads if people access their content via API. I am not going to be surprised at all if reddit soon announces features leaving the API or completely getting rid of it.
If Reddit just cared about having the ads, they could have a free version of the API that includes the inline ads. Or otherwise work with API users to blend in the ads for user-facing clients. They could even kick back a share of that revenue to client makers.
As far as I know they're not doing any of that. To me it looks like the goal is to wall off all the user-generated content in an attempt to extract maximum dollars from it while intentionally excluding third parties.
Or just charge a reasonable price for API access that offsets the lost ad revenue. I think Reddit's ad revenue is something like $0.12/mo for an average user. If their API pricing averaged out to $0.15/month/user they would still be coming out ahead.
This would still hurt free third party apps, but I'm sure power users wouldn't mind paying $1/month to keep their favorite third party app going.
Instead, Reddit went for insane API pricing that app developers can't realistically afford at the subscription rates people are willing to pay.
Or skip the ads problem on third-party apps altogether by requiring the use of Reddit Premium to use third-party apps.
That way reddit gets paid, you avoid having to deal with ads and the developers don't have to absorb an astronomical and unreasonable invoice for API access.
I don’t understand, if API apps not displaying ads is the problem, why Reddit doesn’t include ads in the feed and make displaying them part of the terms for access. They could even have a revenue sharing agreement with the app developers.
Reddit should make an API feature to allow the 3rd party app, the ability to display the ads. Then, Reddit will do profit sharing of each ad shown. This would give the 3rd party app incentive to maintain the app.
Ads have nothing to do with the API changes. First of all, there's bot, to which ads are completely irrelevant, yet they're still affected by the API changes. Second, although there are 3rd party Reddit apps with ads, not all do. For example, Infinity for Reddit is ad-free (and open source), yet they're also affected by the API changes. In fact, Infinity's only monetization is via Infinity+, which has no extra features whatsoever, and only exists as a way to support Infinity's developer. Ads, or monetization at all, should have nothing to do with this.
Edit: sorry if I phrased something badly or was contradictory, I'm a bit tired :P - good night!
Is the missing ADs revenue the crux of the problem?
Instead of raising API price, what if Reddit injects ADs as real content for non premium API calls, so those API free riders/crawlers would get ADs indistinguishable from content. Well intended apps like Apollo could allow users to provide their premium identity and get AD free content. If this works, Reddit could even lower the price of premium account thanks to increase in AD revenue.
Also, I believe Reddit should share ADs revenue with subreddits moderators. This would truly align the incentive of all parties.
third party devs have asked Reddit multiple times for an ad endpoint in the API.
The really good move here would’ve been profit sharing on ads between Reddit and third party apps. But heck these devs were fine displaying ads for Reddit for nothing in return.
That would require the API to also include ad information. I think putting a sensible price on API access would make this a bit simpler, though (and allow for a paid ad-free experience as well). The core issue isn't so much paid API access as the price being so crazy high it can't possibly reflect how much reddit would normally be making from the users of these apps, so instead looks like it is aimed at just shutting down 3rd party apps entirely.
Why not though? Seems really straightforward to serve ads over the API and enforce any display guidelines on third-party apps, since there are only a handful of significant apps anyway.
I for the life of me can't figure out why they are charging so much money for the API. They could do other things such as:
- Mandate as part of the TOS[0] that API users must display the ads in the application unless they pay a higher fee. I get alot of people use 3rd party apps to escape ads, but this wouldn't be the end of the world, it also allows the developer some discretion on how the ads can be formatted visually which could actually be a big win for Reddit in some ways. Make all this contingent on app review and auditing of the app.
- Work with the community to establish a more reasonable API fee. I'm sure everyone can find an agreement here somehow. All but the smallest players likely would find this agreeable.
- Only allow premium (and therefore ad free users) to use 3rd party apps. If they aren't a premium Reddit user they need to use the official client. This seems like the most pragmatic option to me, since those users would by pass ad revenue anyway.
If the primary complaint from Reddit is that they are losing revenue (no ad impressions/lack of user data and metrics gathering) why don't they just keep the API free/affordable but require developers to show ads and send usage metrics back to reddit?
I feel like it's incredibly short sighted for these companies to limit their APIs.
That's an interesting way to frame the reddit debacle. Reddit could have mandated ads to be displayed as a part of their TOS of API usage, but just decided not to - for the clear reason of centralizing users to their app. It wasn't /just/ about the loss of revenue - it was also about the metrics they can collect on their platform which they could not do on others'.
I've used the old.reddit site and ads don't really bother me. On the other hand I've often found the solution to a problem on Google pointing to a Reddit post.
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