Reddit has pathetic ad revenue per user versus every other social media platform. Part of this is likely due to anonymous users that they lack data on for proper targeting. This is their attempt to "fix" that.
I would think that Reddit would have an advantage here in some ways. As an advertiser, instead of trying to pick interests of a general population, you can just pick specific subreddits.
If a store sells geeky/sci-fi clothing and gifts then I found it is way better to just target anyone that visits /r/startrek and some other relevant subreddits. No need to build profiles on users.
I found Facebook to be a lot harder to accurately target users as you are relying on Facebook's profile of a user. I got a lot more reach, but much less conversion.
It makes sense - there will be greater revenue for a few years maybe, in which time the team/product VP responsible would have been promoted. By the time the site culture/userbase dies (maybe in 5 years) these people would be long gone. Maybe even the higher management don't care about a timeline longer than 5 years tbh.
The true management (ie: stock holders) wants to exist at some point. There's talk of an IPO this year in which case they just want to pump up the numbers and hold things stable for another year before they can sell their stock.
What advantages does a user account have over anonymous session ids? User accounts survive users clearing cookies, but I doubt users clear their cookies often enough for that to be a problem.
