That's an interesting idea... Yahoo, AOL, and Demand Media would likely be interested in getting real-time data from Reddit, and being a data provider is a better business than providing commoditized advertising solutions.
Well, if I were Conde Nast, I might have an issue with just making it non-profit after spending a bunch to acquire it. Lotta people loosing jobs in the media space, and it would be difficult to convince me that a site with 280 million page views should just be written off. There's got to be a way to balance community needs with revenue generation.
I agree that Reddit's community might balk at some of the ideas referenced in the article. In fact, I made mention of the Facebook privacy fiasco to highlight the issue. Also, I mentioned the opportunity to go to retailers instead of ad networks. I was thinking of it as a benefit. Imagine going to a retailer's Web site with products that you are interested in showcased on the homepage with discounts instead of random stuff that you are interested in. More like Get Glue (http://getglue.com/)
I actually signed up for a Reddit self service account in doing research for the article. While the Reddit system may do a lot to target the ads on its own, I found it incredibly rigid and lacking a lot of features that other services offer. The lack of features and the proprietary nature of the system preclude the ad service from reaching scale.