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Comment by Maxious | Hacker News Reader

Slide 10 "Take over a subreddit" is interesting. "Lets you include brand messaging, customised layouts and background colors".

I wonder how r/HailCorporate (a subreddit that outs PR companies that spam and manipulate reddit) would feel about their layout being changed.

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Hmm. As far as I've seen these ads are just 350x250 and 300x100 blocks. I've never seen the layout or styling of a subreddit modified for an ad. And I imagine many of the communities being very upset if this did happen (Imagine EA branded /r/gaming).

So that second bullet point seems confusing as I've never seen that and the two ads types they are selling don't seem to offer that capability. Has anyone ever seen the sort of ad that slide describes??

edit: I guess they do have that sort of functionality on reddit.tv but that doesn't seem to be what the slide deck is offering to me.

They usually ask the moderators if it is ok for that particular sponsor. Never had a mod say no though, since the sponsorship is usually pretty targeted and appropriate.

Have you ever had potential-sponsors request ownership of certain subreddits (for $, if it comes down to it)? I understand for big subreddits that wouldn't make sense (e.g., userbase would not take it kindly if r/funny was just bought (i.e. made ruling moderator of r/funny) one day by some media company). But I'm curious what would be the result of, say, the bicycling company Trek trying to become owners of the r/bicycles subreddit.

"Ownership" of a reddit is not for sale, and never has been. The most you can do is get sponsorship rights for however long you want to pay for. However, a sponsor will never have control over the content (unless they manage to get someone on the moderator list I suppose, but they could do that regardless of sponsorship status).

I'm a mod of /r/business, and we had an American Express takeover. It was much more than just two block ads. Full banner, etc. Didn't last that long and our users really didn't seem to mind (or notice.)

At least personally, I react more negatively towards "manipulation" or "subliminal ads" more than outright, in your face ads (especially if done humorously or in good taste), so this "take over a subreddit" may be effective even towards the skeptics and naysayers.

I don't think you could actually change the layout, you would have to be moderator of that subreddit to do it

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