Ads, The Imgur App, and You

Hey there, Imgurians! We come to your phone screens today to tell you about some changes you may start to notice in the iOS app. Let’s get right to the point: this is about ads.

Every day we hear from people who say that Imgur brings them a lot of joy, which is why we want it to be around for a really long time. In order to make sure it is, we earn money through advertising: both display ads and promoted posts. This helps ensure we can grow our team, make Imgur better, and achieve our vision of lifting the world’s spirits through community-powered entertainment.

That’s why we’ve decided to introduce two new ad units: one at the bottom of the comments section, and one interstitial ad that will appear in between posts after you’ve been swiping for a while. Currently it appears in between every 20 posts, you can swipe normally to skip past it, and it looks like the image above. You may start to notice these new additions as you browse this week.

We know you’re concerned about bad ads. We are too, which is why we maintain a strict advertising policy that prohibits ads that auto-redirect you to other sites, play sound without your permission, or contain illegal content or malware. We only work with reputable ad network partners, and have ended partnerships with those that would not adhere to our standards. You can read our ad policy at: https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/214706683

To protect you from bad actors that may attempt to exploit these ad partners, we constantly monitor the ads internally and quickly react to user reports of bad ads. We have also implemented custom code to prevent malicious behavior such as auto-redirects. We truly hope you never come across a bad ad, but if you do, you can report it to us at support@imgur.com so we can investigate and squash it.

Ads are no one’s favorite, but we hope to keep the ads you see on Imgur high-quality, unintrusive, and safe. We have a lot of work to do, and we’re excited to continue our journey with you to make Imgur more awesome, more fun, and more magical!