Balancing Brand Safety and User Engagement in a Two-Sided Market: An Analysis of Content Monetization on Reddit

Abstract

Advertisers aim to avoid content containing controversy, sex, violence, and profanity, while platforms like Reddit aim to monetize as much content with ads as possible. This research explores the dynamics of content monetization in the two-sided market of social media, focusing on Reddit’s brand safety system’s effectiveness in shielding advertisers from unsafe user-generated content (UGC). Analyzing 2,267 active subreddits and 2.74 million submissions over three months in 2022, 55% to 66% of subreddits with relatively high toxicity were deemed acceptable for advertising. Overall, brand safety on Reddit seems to only affect 15% of submissions, with 85% deemed safe for advertising. Inconsistencies in blocking highly toxic subreddits suggest that factors like subreddit size may impact Reddit’s brand safety decisions. Thus, it appears that Reddit’s economic motivations in content monetization outweigh advertiser pressure for brand safety. This research underscores the need for more transparent and precise brand safety solutions. It also suggests that advertiser concern in appearing alongside “unsafe” content is overblown, as no advertisers have spoken out against brand safety on Reddit.