The fact that they're running them for free is kinda interesting. Going from corporate censoring the ads, to reddit essentially giving the campaign a huge contribution. It'll be interesting to see what the fall-out from this is.
There might be some really severe legal consequences to running those free ads. I'm not familiar with campaign finance but it's possible that the law considers Reddit's action to be a "donation" with a large equivalent cash value.
I was thinking the exact same thing. At the very least I think there are disclosure and tax issues, and the fact that the 'donation' came from Conde Nast has pretty significant implications.
I completely agree with you. Either you take the cash or you don't. But if you take the cash, you shouldn't be mourning afterwards about not having enough money (while spending close to 1/2 million a year on ec2) and not being able to decide which ads you run on the site you simply don't own anymore.
Deciding to make it public how much you care about your users opinions of you advertising might convince a few people to turn off AdBlock. Reddit already has a reasonable number of free/unsold ad spaces.
IMHO that'd make you a pretty crappy manager. Didn't Conde Nast pay something like 15 million for Reddit? And you'd make a decision that would, as you said, likely kill the site off over a little authority dispute? What a way to throw your money away.
It's actually really interesting. I've read a lot of articles about the perils of Gen-Y in the workplace, what about when Gen-Y runs your portfolio company?
