That's not really the issue. The fact they have adblock installed makes them the type of demographic that's hard to monetize.
Whitelisting Reddit doesn't magically make them a better demographic.
Whitelisting Reddit doesn't magically make them a better demographic.
Marketing done carefully on such sites can lead to a much more effective turnover if it identifies with the group it's targeting. A few good examples are the beef jerky company and the Reddit soap rescue done about 12 months ago. Forgotten both their names but can do a search if need be :-)
If you are trying to sell ram to me as a retailer, paying money to reach me is probably going to kill any margin you would get from my purchase... to sell me ram you need to be the lowest price of a particular set of brands that I can find. Getting yourself on google shopping would probably be cheaper, and it would be just as effective (maybe more effective... I assume that when I click thorough a paid add, I expect to pay a premium on the other end to pay for the cost of that click through.)
Now, if you are trying to sell ram to someone who, say, doesn't know that google shopping exists, then maybe you can charge more than google shopping and then pay money for an ad to reach that customer.
So, in general, less-savvy consumers who don't understand how to effectively price shop are far more valuable to advertisers. And reddit users usually don't fall into that 'less savvy' bucket.
Now, this is true for the majority of retailers... people who are trying to sell commodity products.
If, on the other hand, you are trying to build a brand, and you can get your add to somehow imply that you are supporting reddit, or you are part of the reddit community (and there is room for that... by buying advertising space, you are supporting reddit, even though you have selfish motives in doing so.) you can effectively leverage that to build your brand amongst those more savvy users (and more savvy users tend to have control of more resources, over time, simply because savvy users generally make better decisions.)
So yeah... if you are trying to sell ram to me as a retailer, ads are probably not going to help you. But if you are a ram manufacturer or a ram "brand" (like kingston) and you are trying to put yourself on my list of 'acceptable quality' ram vendors, then advertising on reddit could possibly help you.
The advertisers definition of 'too smart' being: unlikely to be persuaded by advertising, would comparison shop on the internet, and lacked strong brand loyalty.
I think Reddit is in much the same category, add to this that all ads can be 'Reddited' (commented and voted on by the community) and I imagine many brands are terrified of advertising on their as they'd at a minimum have to assign someone to respond to comments and worst case it would turn into a debacle ala Microsoft's IE9 advertising on Reddit (where the PR team answering questions was openly derided as being flaks and doing nothing but answering technical questions with blathering marketing speak).
Having witnessed many cases where redditors attacked, I would never consider advertising there. I can only imagine most of their advertisers advertise once and never again.
As I say though, volunteering to view ads doesn't make them a better more marketable demographic - Anti-consumerism Liberal College kids mainly.
It would require some hardware and development investment, but I think a strategy like this could pay off immensely. Better yet, it wouldn't run afoul of the users as a) no personal information would be given to advertisers, and b) they would be seeing more relevant ads.