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Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

What percentage of page loads have real adverts for you? I thought maybe it was due to my location (England) but I'm unable to get any real adverts through a US based VPN either (on a clean VM with no reddit session information).

Edit: just had a guy I know from the US do the same experiment, of 20 page loads all 20 were reddit related for him. Not a single "real" advert.

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I just did it 10 times. I'm also in the UK and logged in. I subscribe to about 30 sub-Reddits. I got 9 sponsored links, 1 community link.

Specifically (and I hope this doesn't make this comment get marked as spam!): "SNES, SEGA and NES all in one", "Read 'Probability Angels'", "Save up to 76% on your vacation", "Save up to 76% on your vacation", "Need a degree to back up the knowledge you already have?", community link, "'The Year In Music 2012' Video: Tasia Ann Thomas' Impressive Live Mashup Of Hits", "MMS and SMS text messaging API", "MMS and SMS text messaging API", "Read 'Probability Angels'"

(So two of the sponsored linked were duplicates.)

Trying again in a different browser, logged in to a throwaway account. I get a sponsored link, a "blank" space, a sponsored link, a "blank" space.. a sponsored link, sponsored link, sponsored link..

It makes a lot of sense to use the subreddits to provide targeted ads. Being seen as friendly with goodwill notice for visitors might also be part of this.

Still, that remains one of the least agressive revenue models I've seen.

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