So what’s the catch? The only catch is money. As long as you’re willing to pay the minimum of $20 a day, Reddit will enter you into a pool with everyone else willing to pay to determine how much face time you’ll get on the homepage. For example, if the total bids for the day equal $200, and you bid the minimum $20, you’ll get 10% of the day in this ad slot. It seems very likely that the daily bids are going to be quite a bit more than that, so $20 probably isn’t going to buy you much, but still, it will get you something.

It seems as if Reddit has adopted the same ad model that I played with at a startup a few years ago. I actually wrote a post about this earlier this week, and an in-depth review of what we did and how it worked on my works blog just last week.

Reddit has essentially adopted the "variable CPM" model that I talked about. Well, not essentially. It is. Someone has finally gone ahead and done it. I knew it was just a matter of time before advertising itself became democratized. I actually wrote an email to both Digg and Reddit about this after Digg launched their Digg Ads platform. I never heard back. I wonder if someone over at Reddit read my email.

I'm definitely interested to learn out how this pans out for Reddit. We always thought that for individuals, the model was most compelling if you aggregated all their content together to create a larger pool of impressions; but for huge networks (like Reddit) the model actually works better if it's reversed. That is, if the advertiser can choose which individual page it is they want to place their ad on and you have multiple pools going on for every given piece of content. This way there is an incentive for people to advertise on stories and content that they speculate might become popular or viral, so they can catalyze on the low initial cost of those impressions before everyone else joins the pool. Of course, this requires a more transparent marketplace and the ability to actually track what's going on in real time, but it's completely possible – I should know.

I guess my post on Monday really was spot on. Thanks, Reddit.

I was talking with a friend of mine, Nate Davis, a few weeks ago and we stumbled onto something rather perplexing. A lot of brands spend a tremendous amount of time and money trying to create viral videos. Why? They are extremely expensive to produce and usually end up being anything but viral. They usually outright fail. But if you want to send a message without the support of paid media, how do you do it?

A few brands have discovered that you don't have to sink tens of thousands of dollars into production in order to send a message viral. You can do it with an image. If you’re a connoisseur of cliché Internet buzzwords, you might know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about infographs.

Making an infograph is relatively cheap and easy. How many stunning infographics could you make for the cost of a single viral video? Ten? Fifty? A hundred? If they’re relevant, you’ve got a good chance at getting half of them plastered all over Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. They are also easier to embed on blogs and you don’t have to worry about how to get them to display on devices that don’t support Adobe Flash, like the iPhone.

Moreover, it’s just better format for most brands to use on a regular basis. You can be blunt about what it is you want to say. As long as you can make it visually compelling, people will want to spend time with it. You don’t have to try to trick the consumer into watching it or sharing it. The brand itself can speak, and what it says can be, not only genuinely interesting to the consumer, but helpful. With an infographic a brand can come out and say: This is who we are, this is what we’re interested in, and this is what we think is true about the world.

Mint has been pumping out infographics like mad for the past few months. They are a great example of a company who understands how it is people are sharing information online, and how to actually inject themselves into the conversation. Bravo, Mint. Bravo.