[nevf1]

Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc.

Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.

[Cthulhu_]

Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things.

I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage?

Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always have better UX than a website. Think of the subtle things like page transitions. Navigating Reddit still causes full-page reloads, whereas on the app it's a much more organic process. Speed is also an important factor.

[allerhellsten]

Exactly this. To give you a datapoint from our properties: Our web site attracts 90% of the users, but only 60% of the actual traffic. In all metrics like retention, frequency and time on site, mobile leads by factors of 2-5.

Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they can just as well use it) and partly better performance.

So much about the users, but Monetization is much better as well, mostly due to mobile ad-IDs, which especially on iOS lets you extract double the revenue per user due to targeting. Ad blockers are harder to bypass.

In the end, a mobile app will get you anywhere between 2-10x the revenue per user you attracted to your property, so that's why Reddit is pushing so hard.

To stay in Reddit's lingo though:

`LPT: https://old.reddit.com`

[marcosdumay]

> what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage?

Reddit

Do you really think that people would stop going to reddit if they used the site instead of the app on their mobile? (But, of course, the people more prone to recurring visits are more likely to install an app.)

> mobile app will always have better UX than a website

And again, it's reddit we are talking about here. The app experience is just horrible.

[badassiel]

someone compared mobile and web (with data from study) as Web, easier to attract, difficult to retain and vice versa for mobile.

Could be the reason why web to app migration practices are followed. best of both worlds.

[GekkePrutser]

They really hurt their own monetisation by making the subscriptions too expensive though. They more than doubled in price recently. It's not worth the price anymore for me.

[RealStickman_]

It's also interesting to note that the old ui on a desktop does not have these useless messages you mentioned.