When they said Reddit has 2000 employees I was shocked. what could they possibly do onto a website that is basically run by users (and sysadmins) and that is basically feature-wise mature? I really can’t figure out 2000 people working every day on Reddit… on what? just for a quick comparison, the whole IAmA was run by a single person (Victoria), so… what are they doing?
Maybe for you. Remember, ads are based on who they think you are.
When you travel the web, various entities (like Google) record what you’re doing. Then they add any info they know about you like your age, sex, weight, height, race, and a million other things and compare it to other people that match some of those things.
If they don’t have all that info, don’t worry they can make educated guesses based on search topics, websites visited, buying habits, surfing habits, and many other things. They simply compare you to other people who have the same or similar habbits, and they can fill in the blank data. And the more you do stuff online, the more accurate their file on you becomes.
So, and I’m just guessing here, if you’re seeing army ads, they probably think you’re young - maybe just out of high school maybe still in high school, and not sure what to do after. If you’re seeing he gets us, that’s because that group has invested an unheard-of amount of money to get their ads in front of people, so that might be more generic.
But anyway, reddit wants to make their ads better for these advertisers, so they work with data, systems, and programmers to make sure they know as much about you as possible. So they can tell their advertisers “We are showing your ads to High School Boys who may be directionless.”
And they’re also buying your data from Google to make further assurances. And all that is not done by one person, that could easily be a team of 100. And since that’s how reddit increases its bottom line for investors, it’s probably a lot more than 100.