Looking at what reddit does, I seriously doubt this. They're not a "publication". They don't have to pay writers/journalists to create content, the content comes free. There are many ad-based sites that don't have that luxury. Event moderators come from the community, they're only significant costs is infrastructure and payroll. I use to work for a company that has a fraction of the uniques reddit gets (still in the millions a month though) and that 1) does a lot more then reddit as a product and 2) has significant other costs outside of salary and infrastructure and was still not in the red. Also, this wasn't shitty advertising, the ads were well monitored and we broke ties with networks/advertisers that we found continuously had crappy ads.