https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_up...
As for Tom, here's what I posted on r/defaultmods addressing that concern.
>>
I ran those ads when I learned Tom was using the site.
I did that because for the last few weeks more and more celebrities have been coming on or reaching out to use reddit as members of the community. And we've run sponsored headline to draw attention to it, these ads have been viewed over 14M times in the last couple of weeks without incident. They've also performed exceptionally well (Bill Gates' for instance had 368% higher CTR than average).
+That moment when Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) shows up to compliment your Rebel helmet patch +Oh, just Bill Gates hanging out on r/infographics +Lil Dicky drops a new music video, shows up in the comments of r/Music thread
Admittedly, these ads all went up at least 24hrs after the celeb showed up and left, whereas I jumped on the Tom Hanks one as soon as I realized it was happening. We're not going to do that again. Those ads also performed very well (63% higher than site average) but were a really bad look.
To be clear: we're not paying them. They're coming because we're actually making progress showing them the value of joining the community.
Wynter (u/808sandhotcakes) has been doing a lot of great work, by virtue of her great reputation in the industry alone, people are genuinely reaching out to learn how to join the Reddit community. We're excited about that, because it clearly makes our users very happy and by every account the talent enjoys it, too.
edit: (See, I'm already getting better: Arnold + Adam Savage stopped by since Tom and no obnoxious sponsored headlines.)