Reddit: $8.3M in ad revenue; time for a new front page?

The company is going to make good on its promise and will donate 10% of that to charity

When people think of Reddit, it’s likely that the more unsavory aspects of the company are what first ome to mind. The company has been trying to change that image, though. For example, just about a year ago, Reddit made a pretty big promise: that it would donate 10% of its 2014 total ad revenue to charity.

"We want to show that advertising doesn’t just support the reddit platform, it also directly supports the causes and goals of reddit as a whole," Reddit said at the time. And, to its credit, the company is now making good on that claim.

In 2014, the company made exactly $8,276,594.93 in ad revenue, it was revealed in a blog post on Wednesday. (How many companies give you the number down to the exact cent like that?) So that means that $82,765.95 will be donated to 10 separate charities, equaling over $827,000.

This being Reddit, it is, of course, allowing its users to choose which charities the money will go to and the company revealed that it has partnered with Charity Navigator, a site that evaluates and rates charities, to help users choose.

The Charity Navigator database "includes all charities they have reviewed, as well as all charities that have a US tax identification number (EIN)," Reddit said. "If you’re unable to find a particular charity by searching by name, just type in the charity’s EIN. This number can usually be found on the charity’s website."

There are some rules for voting for a charity, though. First, the user account has to have been created before 10 am on Wednesday. Reddit said it did this to "reduce any potential shenanigans," which I guess might include charities signing up a bunch of new Reddit accounts to increase their odds of getting the funding.

User are allowed to vote for as many different charities as they like, but they are also limited to one vote per charity. So no stacking the deck. Voting will go on for one week, ending on February 25th at 10 am PST. The winners will be announced within 48 hours.

Reddit also cited a number of other examples of its charitable ways, including challenging Digg to see who could donate the most to Haiti earthquake victims through Direct Relief, and being one of the most major participants in Extra Life’s annual gaming marathon for the past four years, where it has helped raise $278,604 to date.

The company's $8.3 million in ad revenue is pretty small when you compare it to other similar sites. BuzzFeed, which is more of a news site than the social platform that Reddit is, but which still relies on advertising for revenue, surpassed $100 million in 2014. Content discovery engine StumbleUpon was making upwards of $30 million in 2013. Reddit's closest rival is Digg; the company that was sold in 2012. That company was only making $3 million to $4 million before the acquisition, so at least Reddit is doing better than someone.

2014 was, overall, a mixed bad for Reddit. It had its lows, like having to deal with the nude photo scandal that hit in September. It then banned the pictures in a move that its members decried as censorship.

The company also lost its CEO over a bizarre incident involving a new office building.

There was some good news to report too, though. Reddit did raise a $50 million funding round from investors that included Sam Altman, Andreesen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Jared Leto and Snoop Dog, which put it at a $500 million valuation.

(Image source: reddit.com)