So a site that made "interesting ads" part of their brand and actively rejected boring and obnoxious ones, could potentially be valuable. Maybe reddit is consciously doing this.
Maybe. :) In fact, we use reddit quite a bit, and the flashy ads annoy us just as much as the rest of you. We do our best to keep the ads relevant and non-annoying.
If we could afford it, we would just turn the ads off, but sadly, we have to pay the bills somehow.
> "If we could afford it, we would just turn the ads off, but sadly, we have to pay the bills somehow."
This comment, however, isn't helpful, and obviously isn't true. Reddit built a really cool, useful site for sharing and discussing interesting things, and nobody begrudges them for trying to turn a profit. Reddit wasn't acquired by Condé Nast because they are interested in having a cool service, it was acquired because they intend to make a lot of money off of it.
The fact that Reddit has found a way to do this while keeping the ads relevant and non-annoying definitely impressive, but we're kidding ourselves if we call these ads a necessary evil instead of the core of the business model.
Sure it is true. We would love to run the site without ads. There are other business models besides straight ads, and we are working on moving towards those.
They just aren't profitable yet.
That's probably why.