I'm not so sure about that - you have a community that is very tech-oriented and actually volunteering to view ads knowing it is doing the community a benefit. Such people are more likely to pay attention to what is being advertised as well as they're conscious the advertisements are there by choice.
Marketing done carefully on such sites can lead to a much more effective turnover if it identifies with the group it's targeting. A few good examples are the beef jerky company and the Reddit soap rescue done about 12 months ago. Forgotten both their names but can do a search if need be :-)
eh, the thing is, most of the time, if you are selling, say, kingston ram, when you buy advertising, you are trying to exploit a disparity in information access. I buy lots of ram, right? I've used three grand worth of ram so far this month and have 1/3rd of that on order. I want to pay the lowest price I can for acceptable quality (usually defined as being made by one of several brands.) ram. I spend a fair amount of effort seeking out the lowest price on ram.
If you are trying to sell ram to me as a retailer, paying money to reach me is probably going to kill any margin you would get from my purchase... to sell me ram you need to be the lowest price of a particular set of brands that I can find. Getting yourself on google shopping would probably be cheaper, and it would be just as effective (maybe more effective... I assume that when I click thorough a paid add, I expect to pay a premium on the other end to pay for the cost of that click through.)
Now, if you are trying to sell ram to someone who, say, doesn't know that google shopping exists, then maybe you can charge more than google shopping and then pay money for an ad to reach that customer.
So, in general, less-savvy consumers who don't understand how to effectively price shop are far more valuable to advertisers. And reddit users usually don't fall into that 'less savvy' bucket.
Now, this is true for the majority of retailers... people who are trying to sell commodity products.
If, on the other hand, you are trying to build a brand, and you can get your add to somehow imply that you are supporting reddit, or you are part of the reddit community (and there is room for that... by buying advertising space, you are supporting reddit, even though you have selfish motives in doing so.) you can effectively leverage that to build your brand amongst those more savvy users (and more savvy users tend to have control of more resources, over time, simply because savvy users generally make better decisions.)
So yeah... if you are trying to sell ram to me as a retailer, ads are probably not going to help you. But if you are a ram manufacturer or a ram "brand" (like kingston) and you are trying to put yourself on my list of 'acceptable quality' ram vendors, then advertising on reddit could possibly help you.
I can't find a link but a while back on TWIT Leo Laporte said something along the lines of: "Multiple advertisers have declined to spend money with us because our audience is 'too smart'".
The advertisers definition of 'too smart' being: unlikely to be persuaded by advertising, would comparison shop on the internet, and lacked strong brand loyalty.
I think Reddit is in much the same category, add to this that all ads can be 'Reddited' (commented and voted on by the community) and I imagine many brands are terrified of advertising on their as they'd at a minimum have to assign someone to respond to comments and worst case it would turn into a debacle ala Microsoft's IE9 advertising on Reddit (where the PR team answering questions was openly derided as being flaks and doing nothing but answering technical questions with blathering marketing speak).
Advertisers might not have warmed to it yet but I much prefer advertising that is a 2 way street. The good products and services rise to the top whereas the empty marketing speak approaches fail.
Months ago an SMS provider advertised on reddit. Rather than downvote or ignore the link, there was a veritable flame war of people signing up for the beta just to waste the advertiser's time and quite a bit of animosity going back and forth. Even though most of the people in that conversation wouldn't have utilized the service, they attacked the advertiser because anything involving SMS must be spam.
Having witnessed many cases where redditors attacked, I would never consider advertising there. I can only imagine most of their advertisers advertise once and never again.
Some redditors are college kids. Many, however, are professionals. Just look at the money raised for Haiti, the Colbert Rally, etc. They are notoriously willing to part with their money for things they like. I think the problem is not that the userbase is unmarketable, but rather that capitalizing on it would require more than the typical semi-related ad strategy. They really should create a system whereby advertisers can choose specific types of redditors they want to target. Rate everyone on a Meyers Briggs type scale based upon their voting, clicking, and subscription habits. Package that data into an API that advertisers can easily use to pick out the types of individual they want to target. Thus pro-prop 19 groups could target subscribers of r/trees or people who upvote pro-marijuana stories, without only being able to advertise in pro-marijuana reddits. Conversely, the anti-gay marriage folks who were banned could target people who would likely hold their points of view. This cuts out much of the risk that advertisers currently face, of running into people who quite vocally oppose their ads, and should also help to ensure a higher CTR.
It would require some hardware and development investment, but I think a strategy like this could pay off immensely. Better yet, it wouldn't run afoul of the users as a) no personal information would be given to advertisers, and b) they would be seeing more relevant ads.
Marketing done carefully on such sites can lead to a much more effective turnover if it identifies with the group it's targeting. A few good examples are the beef jerky company and the Reddit soap rescue done about 12 months ago. Forgotten both their names but can do a search if need be :-)