23 Feb Tips & Best Practices for Reddit Ads
Advertisers are starting to allocate more of their marketing dollars to Reddit. This year, the platform is expected to hit $212.5 million in ad revenue in the U.S. It’s not at the level of Facebook ($40.76 billion in 2021), however, the year-over-year ad revenue growth is more than double that of Facebook (source: eMarketer, October 2020).
Why is that so? Reddit is popular. It’s the #2 ranked News app in the App Store (as of February 21, 2021). U.S. users spend more time in the Reddit app than they do in the Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, or Pinterest apps (source: App Annie, 2020). Not to mentioned Reddit recently garnered some additional attention from the GameStop stockmarket craze.
If you’re interested in joining the conversation, here’s what you need to know about Reddit’s current advertising offerings.
Reddit Ad Products
Reddit offers a suite of ad products including takeover ad units (which are available on a reserve, so you must work with a representative to place them) and native auction ads. To get started with native ads, visit ads.reddit.com and fill out your company details including username, company name, industry, etc. (Pro tip: The username appears on the ad to inform users who the ad is coming from, and once created the username cannot be updated, so choose wisely.) If you’re an agency with multiple brands looking to run Reddit ads, you’ll need to create an account for each brand.
Once signed up, you’ll have access to a dashboard where you can create campaigns and view the performance of your campaigns. The paid structure is similar to other social self-serve platforms with campaign (objective and funding source), ad set (targeting, device type, budget, bid, schedule, and pacing), and ad (creative).
Objectives Available
Reddit ads support the following objectives: Brand Awareness and Reach, Traffic, Conversions, Video Views, and App Installs. In 2019, Reddit shifted from a CPM to a CPC buying model. Since CPC buying is newer to the platform, advertisers may see Traffic campaigns with lower CPMs than Brand Awareness/Reach campaigns, so if your goal is awareness and your budget will allow, test both ad objectives to see which brings in the lowest CPM. As the auction matures, the ad objectives should function the way advertisers are used to.
Targeting Options
Targeting focuses on two groups: interests and communities. Interests target those who interacted with content around a particular interest, such as Animals & Pets, Food & Drink, Family & Relationships, etc. With community targeting, advertisers can tap into the 100K+ communities on Reddit (source: Reddit Internal Data, 2020) by reaching those who interacted to or subscribed to a subreddit. This targeting is unique to Subreddit and is a great way to target hard-to-reach niche audiences. When planning your Reddit campaign, research which communities make sense for your brand by checking out the different communities in the platform. A max of 100 communities can be uploaded to a single ad group, so make sure you’re focusing on the ones that make the most sense for your audience.
Similar to other social ads platforms, advertisers can also target by device: desktop or mobile. A word to the wise: With the current dashboard set up, Reddit is not able to breakdown the data by device, so instead of combining both into one campaign, create campaigns for each device. This will allow you to view costs for each and guide your optimization as you move funds from one campaign to another for maximum results.
Creative Considerations
Native ads come in three formats including video, text, and link. If you’re not sure which to use first, check out the communities you plan on targeting to see which format is commonly used in the group. Content that fits in with the community and is unique and relevant typically performs well on Reddit. Additionally, U.S. Reddit engagers/contributors want brands to be funny, trendy/cool, and bold, so also consider this when creating content (source: GlobalWebIndex Q2, Q3 2020).
To see what works and what doesn’t, it’s best to run multiple creatives. No need to exhaust your creative resources by creating entirely new ads. You can make minor tweaks to your creative by using slightly different copy, headlines, or call-to-action buttons. To avoid audience fatigue, refresh your creative every few weeks.
Advertisers have the option to allow for comments on the ads. If you don’t have resources to monitor and respond to comments, consider turning this functionality off.
Pixel Capabilities
Similar to other platforms, advertisers using Reddit can add a snippet of code to their website to run retargeting campaigns and track conversions associated with the media buy. In addition to the base code, Reddit offers additional event tracking including Page Visits, View Content, Search, Add to Cart, Add to Wishlist, Purchase, Lead, and Sign Up. For a more laser-focused retargeting campaign and to get a full picture of the customer journey, it’s recommended that the event tracking is applied to your website. To learn more about the benefits of pixel technology, check out Paid Advertising on LinkedIn: The Value of the LinkedIn Insight Tag on the Ignite Social Media blog.
While Reddit may not dominate the conversation about the biggest social networks, there’s plenty of conversation happening on the platform itself, creating a great opportunity for advertisers. Contact us to see how we can help your brand reach communities on Reddit or subscribe to our newsletter below to keep up with social media news and trends.
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