Reddit Ads 101

Reddit started selling ads way back in 2006, something that surprised us a little while researching for this as we can probably count on one hand the number of times their name has come up in relation to campaign planning over the past few years. Perhaps that’s due to the audience being historically weighted towards the US, or maybe Reddit simply missed the boat (or cruiseliner) that Facebook boarded around a year later in 2007.

Regardless, opportunities on Reddit have started to come back into focus recently, helped by a revamped self-serve advertising platform, and a desire for greater organic visibility. So we’ve put together a breakdown of what Reddit has to offer advertising wise, and where it could be a good fit.

Campaign Types

Reddit offers a choice of the following campaign objectives (which will be very familiar to those well versed in Meta Ads):

• Brand awareness
• Traffic
• Conversion
• Video views
• App installs
• Catalog sales

There are creative choices later down the line within these, such as the option to run standard image vs carousels, but ultimately this is your starting point. So pretty comprehensive overall, although we do feel that Reddit best serves as a brand awareness opportunity for the majority of businesses.

Targeting

As well as the usual demographic options such as location and gender (although no age refinements interestingly), the core audience targeting for Reddit can be seen below:

Community audiences feel like Reddit’s key USP’s here, with the ability to target any r/ subreddit on the platform. Let’s take an example of a company that wants to run adventure travel ads, but doesn’t know who they could target. Adding the prompt into Communities generates tons of suggestions with good audience sizes:

Additionally, you can refine targeting by device or placement (feed vs conversations), and there is also a handy Brand Safety tool to exclude particular communities e.g. politics and/or keywords.

Once your options have been selected, Reddit will then give you an estimate for your audience size and break down how many impressions and clicks a given weekly budget would give you:

Creative

Ad creative options again feel very similar to other platforms like Meta (in fact there is a Meta campaign import tool currently in Beta), and your content will be displayed as either a card, compact or conversation. We’ve included placeholder images for context below:

Want to see what competitors are doing, or looking for creative ideas? Check out Reddit’s Ad Inspiration Library, where you can filter by industry, budget, ad format, placement and objective.

Who is Reddit a good fit for?

Ultimately, like all social media platforms, Reddit has a unique set of users, who use it for specific reasons – be that research, entertainment or simply engaging with their online community. Not all users who are on Reddit are on Facebook for example, and even if they are, they’re in different states of mind while using them. That presents an opportunity for almost any company to expand their reach and engagement with their target audience.

If you’re looking for more specifics suited to your business, we suggest utilising a combination of the ad inspiration library and doing some research on existing active subreddits as a first step. Reddit is also currently matching campaign spends up to £1,500, so it’s a good time to test and evaluate its impact.

*All Imagery sourced from reddit.com