How to Advertise on Reddit: Getting Started

I am an avid daily Reddit user (AKA a Redditor). I use this platform so much that I became a moderator for a niche community. That being said, imagine my surprise when one of my colleagues told me that Reddit has a brand new certification program available. To the surprise of no one, I jumped in immediately and learned a lot about the types of ads available, targeting capabilities, and brand safety that advertisers can utilize in-platform. 

Who Are the Redditors? 

Reddit users, A.K.A Redditors, are passionate members of over 130,000 online communities of shared interests such as r/technology, r/designmyroom, and r/femalefashionadvice. One of the things that makes Reddit unique is that many Redditors are not on other social media platforms. 

Percent of Redditors Not on Other Social Platforms 

• 30% Facebook
• 45% Instagram
• 59% Twitter 
• 74% Snapchat
• 58% TikTok 

Why Should You Advertise on Reddit?

Passionate Communities 

People join Reddit Communities, A.K.A. Subreddits, to share their passions and interests with like-minded individuals. Currently, the platform boasts over 130,000 Subreddits. It’s easy for users to find a community where they belong. 

Redditors want to be informed by conversations they trust in these communities. These communities are growing in popularity. Reddit is seeing a 30% user growth YoY and in the top 5 most trafficked sites in the U.S.

Redditor Demographics and Behavior

In 2020, 57% of Redditors identified as male and 64% of total users were between 18 – 34 years old and 69% of users browse Reddit on Mobile. Reddit is a great platform for long-term engagement. On average, Redditors spend 36 minutes a day on the platform. 

Drive Action & Advocacy

Redditors trust the opinions of their fellow users and utilize Reddit to make purchase decisions. Compared with other social media platforms, Redditors spend more time researching and evaluating brands an average of 4x more research sessions.

After their detailed research, Redditors make purchase decisions 9x faster and spend 15% more. After they make the purchase, Redditors are 13% more likely to advocate or speak positively about a brand.

How Do I Build a Campaign on Reddit?

Brands are to create campaigns with five different objectives.

Once the budget and payment method is confirmed, brands can start creating targeting at the ad group level. 

How Does Reddit Targeting Work? 

Once at the ad group level, advertisers can set budget and flight dates. This is where they built detailed targeting. Because Redditors bring their authentic selves to the platform and engage in real conversations, it can help advertisers achieve more accurate and efficient targeting. 

Targeting capabilities can be divided into Reddit Audience and Custom Audience. 

Reddit Audience

A Reddit audience is based on their user behaviors or interest in-platform. One method of targeting is Interest Targeting. This kind of targeting focuses on users who have engaged with specific interest groups on Reddit. This includes Animals, Arts & Design, Automotive, Business & Finance. Entertainment, Family & Relationships, Food & Drink, Gaming, Health, News & Education, Sports, Style  & Fashion, Technology, Televisions, and Travel. Interest groups can be broken down into specific subgroups which can be divided into specific communities. 

Community targeting focuses on people who are active within specific communities advertisers specify, regardless of where they are currently engaging in-platform. For example, a beauty company wants to target Redditors who are active in the r/skincare community. The Redditors may see the beauty company’s promoted posts in other communities such as r/fitness or r/fashion.

Recently, Reddit launched the beta-phase of keyword audience targeting. Brands can upload a list of keywords that are relevant to their target market. 

Custom Audiences

Advertisers can target specific Redditors based on uploaded customer lists. They can maximize ad efficiency by excluding members who have already converted or engaged with the brand. Another source of custom audiences is from pixel retargeting.

Advertisers can create a custom audience based on a Redditor’s action on their website. This can help move users down the funnel. Retargeted ads at a 40% higher click-through rate than non-retargeted ads.

Once the ad group details have been selected, Reddit will give audience size, weekly result, and daily result estimates. Once the details have been saved, advertisers can start creating ads.

What Are the Types of Reddit Ads Available? 

Reddit utilizes promoted placements that look like organic in-feed posts. These promoted posts can be divided into text, image, video, and carousel. 

Promoted Posts – Text 

This is Reddit’s original ad format. It includes upvotes, and downvotes and allows comments in-thread. The brand does have the option to enable or disable comments. These text ads are available on desktop and mobile. 

The anatomy of a text-based ad includes a headline/post title that has a 100-character max for mobile and 250-character max for desktop. Optional post copy can be added with a 40,000-character limit. 

Promoted Posts – Image

There are a number of differences between a text-based and an image-based promoted post. First, it allows the brand to have a 300-character max headline. It also allows brands to add a 1200x628px card image, 400×300 thumbnail, CTA, destination URL, and display URL.

Promoted Videos

Promoted video has the same standard elements of promoted posts such as upvotes/downvotes and comment capabilities but it allows brands to upload auto-plat videos with multiple aspect ratios and optional CTAs. Promoted videos also allow brands to choose CPM or CPV bid models. Promoted videos on Reddit lead to a 3.3X higher brand awareness and is the platform’s primary ad unit.

Creative best practices for promoted videos state that the video file should either b3 .mp4 or .MOV with a 1 GB size maximum and run between 0:05 – 0:30 seconds.

Promoted Carousels

Promoted carousels resemble carousel ad types on other social media platforms except that it includes standard elements of Reddit posts, which keeps placements looking native in-feed. These Reddit ads are the newest Promoted Post type. 

Just like promoted videos, promoted carousels have multiple bid options, destination URLs, and display URLs,  but carousel ads allow brands to upload 2 – 6 image or gif cards.

Final Thoughts

I’m a huge fan of Reddit and I do believe it has been underutilized in digital advertising. Redditors trust the platform for its authenticity and Reddit gives advertisers the ability to track these engaged and active audiences in-platform. 

If you’d like to learn more on how Reddit could help lift up your brand contact us, If aren’t quite ready to add Reddit into your repertoire, I totally recommend creating an account and following r/mademesmile for a daily dopamine fix.

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