I paid for Reddit Premium for an ad-free experience. Reddit makes no ad revenue from me. All these moves won't change that for Reddit.
Spez's claim that "the app" is "generating" API calls is nonsense. It's users like you and me that generate API calls using an https client that, in this case, speaks API. Reddit Premium users are their highest ARPU class, over 10x what they claim they can get from advertisers.
It therefore seems obvious to partner with premium app devs, to allow the apps to support Reddit Premium users as a perk of Reddit Premium. Subscribing to both Reddit Premium (paying for ad free access) and app (supporting the app developer) is not a problem for these users.
The Venn Diagram for these two premium spends is clear -- and Reddit is attacking it to no possible gain. There is no alternative business model on the table better for them (and their IPO price) than a premium user remaining a premium user.
By killing my ability to pay for Apollo, they will not gain a single ad view from me, because I pay to not see the ads already.
Further, they will now also lose 10 users worth of ad views, because I will no longer pay for Reddit Premium.
Instead, let Premium accounts access through API, Reddit's Premium user count will balloon, and quality apps will gain a new audience of ready-to-spend subscribers, all with no impact on Reddit's ability to sell ads which make strictly less money than Premium accounts.
(I am confused why this obvious solve is never discussed. News reporting is accepting the premise apps issue API calls instead of users, Spez's AMA is terrible, and community threads are missing this. Apollo dev also fails to help the press understand the framing that Apollo is a user agent and "the web" was intended for use by user-agents. None of this is coming up.)
Spez's claim that "the app" is "generating" API calls is nonsense. It's users like you and me that generate API calls using an https client that, in this case, speaks API. Reddit Premium users are their highest ARPU class, over 10x what they claim they can get from advertisers.
It therefore seems obvious to partner with premium app devs, to allow the apps to support Reddit Premium users as a perk of Reddit Premium. Subscribing to both Reddit Premium (paying for ad free access) and app (supporting the app developer) is not a problem for these users.
The Venn Diagram for these two premium spends is clear -- and Reddit is attacking it to no possible gain. There is no alternative business model on the table better for them (and their IPO price) than a premium user remaining a premium user.
By killing my ability to pay for Apollo, they will not gain a single ad view from me, because I pay to not see the ads already.
Further, they will now also lose 10 users worth of ad views, because I will no longer pay for Reddit Premium.
Instead, let Premium accounts access through API, Reddit's Premium user count will balloon, and quality apps will gain a new audience of ready-to-spend subscribers, all with no impact on Reddit's ability to sell ads which make strictly less money than Premium accounts.
(I am confused why this obvious solve is never discussed. News reporting is accepting the premise apps issue API calls instead of users, Spez's AMA is terrible, and community threads are missing this. Apollo dev also fails to help the press understand the framing that Apollo is a user agent and "the web" was intended for use by user-agents. None of this is coming up.)