Reddit Ads: Are They Worth Testing?

Picture this: you’re engaged in your morning scroll through your Facebook or LinkedIn feeds, pausing to read headlines in between sips of coffee. You come across a particularly interesting article about wombats, skim it, share it and move on with your day.

At lunchtime, you tee up a video from one of your favorite YouTube creators. Sandwich in hand, mustard dripping down your shirt – you find this video to be particularly educational and think one of your coworkers might benefit from watching it too. You shoot off an email, and then reach for a napkin to finally wipe away that darned mustard stain.

Later that night, you’re lying on the couch thumbin’ through your Instagram Stories and swipe to a meme you find particularly hilarious, so you DM it to a friend before settling in to binge watch the latest Netflix docu-series about Midwestern serial killers everyone is talking about.

What do each of these scenarios have in common?

Each piece of content discovered, consumed and shared in each of these scenarios first gained their initial share of Internet momentum on a completely separate platform.

Reddit.

What Is Reddit?

Reddit is commonly referred to as the “front page of the Internet” for a reason – it’s often the breeding ground for everything popular on the Internet.

In fact, it’s very name points this out: whatever content you’re consuming on Facebook, Instagram, email, Slack etc., there’s a good chance Redditors have already read it.

Reddit – a “massive collection of forums,” as DigitalTrends.com so eloquently puts it – is a place where people share news, videos, photos and memes.

Each “forum” is referred to as a “subreddit,” each of which can cover broad topics. For example, travel enthusiasts may enjoy the /R/Travel subreddit and partake in daily travel inspiration and advice.

That said, subreddits can get even more granular than that.

For example, using this same example, travel enthusiasts who like to explore but specifically enjoy rock climbing in canyons may enjoy the /R/Canyoneering subreddit where they can interact with others about the nuances of the sport.

As of 2017, Statista.com points out that there are 1.2 million hyper-targeted subreddits for people to post content, ask questions or provide advice across a wide range of topics.

Statista.com claims you’d be “hard-pressed to find a topic that isn’t discussed on Reddit these days.”

As people continually post on Reddit, users in each given subreddit are then given the option to up-vote, down-vote or comment further on others contributions, leading to discussion that further drives a post’s popularity.

This is typically how Reddit discerns good content from undesirable content. If you post good content often enough, you earn “karma.” The more karma you have, the more clout you have on Reddit, which means the more likely your contributions – so long as they provide value to the subreddit – will be heralded.

If the content you post gets heralded enough, your content will be fortunate enough to get shared throughout the rest of the Internet for others to see – a sort of “trickle down” effect, if you will.

If the content you post is deemed undesirable or useless, Redditors will be quick to point it out, upholding the sanctity of the subreddit and community in the process.

Who Uses Reddit?

Business Insider cites Reddit as the “fifth most trafficked website” with a user base that “rivals Twitter’s in size.”

That’s 330 million monthly active users – 79% of which being between the ages of 18-34 years old – generating 18 billion page views per month. Among this audience, people are spending an average of 16 minutes per day on Reddit, whereas Facebook and Twitter users spend an average of 10 and 6 minutes per day on the platform, respectively.

Not only that, according to The Drum’s comScore, 81% of U.S. Redditors don’t use Instagram with only 49% of its users having a Twitter account, leading to the ability for brands to reach a valuable new audience.

Reddit’s Ad Offerings

Top Post Takeover

This ad unit will display branded content at the top of the front page.

According to a presentation obtained by CNBC, which was pitched to a half-dozen ad agencies at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Reddit says advertisers can “own Reddit’s most valuable advertising real estate for 24 hours. When users visit Reddit, your brand will be seen in the top ad slot in their feed and throughout the sidebar.”

On desktop, Top Post Takeovers are made to look like an average Reddit post with a small thumbnail-sized image and a headline, leaving much of the initial creative to copywriters to draw people in. On mobile, images display the width of the screen, similar to that of a promoted post on Facebook, allowing for a more visual ad experience.

Promoted Posts

Promoted posts on Reddit aren’t unlike promoted posts on platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn. They’re seamlessly inserted throughout the newsfeed on desktop and mobile, appearing like normal Reddit posts.

Toyota tested Reddit’s promoted post according to one Reddit case study, claiming to combine the “high-production value of Toyota’s broadcast spots with campaign prompts that delighted and engaged Millennials across a diverse array of communities.”

Prompts ranged from “tell us your best lumberjack joke” to “name the three people you’d take to Mars,” which resulted in an average Active Page Dwell Time of 72 seconds as well as a 23% chance of Promoted Post visitors navigating back to posts one or more times.

Toyota experienced a 6.4x lift in Brand Favorability and a 3.4x life in Purchase Intent.

Banner Ads

Banner ads display on the sidebar on desktop, much like they would on other platforms throughout the Internet.

According to a Reddit case study, Duracell drove “mass awareness of their Star Wars holiday broadcast spot through a classic banner campaign.”

The campaign delivered 250M+ impressions during the holiday season by displaying Duracell’s creative through “strategic subreddit targeting.”

Ask Me Anything (AMA)

The Ask Me Anything (AMA) offering is reminiscent of the platforms popular Q&A-style subreddit in which celebrities from all walks of life engage in conversation directly with people on Reddit.

This is an opportunity to get creative with celebrities and influencers on the platform.

For example, Audi partnered with celebrities such as Olivia Munn and Issa Rae in late 2017 to launch Think Faster: The World’s Fastest AMA.

The concept was pretty simple, people ask the celebrities questions about anything, and the actresses would answer their questions via video in the “hot seat” of an Audi R8 as they race around a track at 130mph.

"Reddit is a bit of an unusual platform because there is a live audience and it's almost the heart of social; there has to be a conversation," Ken Bracht, director of brand marketing for Audi, told AdAge. "And yes, it's a buzzword, but authenticity is important. We knew if we wanted to do interviews and have it live that the most authentic way of asking questions on the Internet was to use Reddit."

The videos featuring Munn and Issa Rae each received 2 million views with 4,000+ comments.

Should Advertisers Consider Reddit Advertising?

Advertising is fairly new to Reddit. In my experience, the community has historically been adverse to the concept, even in the form of shameless self-promoted.

This is because Redditors largely want to maintain the space for themselves, enjoy high-quality content and engage in conversations that aren’t punctuated by ads.

As Search Engine Journal points out:

Redditors are a clever bunch – they will smell your marketing campaign a mill away. Inauthentic engagers will get the boot. But those who learn how to become part of a community and add value can reap the following benefits:

• Driving traffic
• Branding
• Testing New Products
• Selling Products
• Reaching Your Audiences Interests

That said, the question becomes: is Reddit even a safe environment for brands in the first place?

According to Zubair Jandali, Reddit’s VP of Brand Partnerships, “Brand safety is not a concern that any one of our customers has… once they’ve worked with us for the first time, their full attention is on the opportunity, not the perceived risk.“

Like any other popular platform in the history of the Internet, the shift to a more ad-friendly environment looms large for Reddit.

While Redditors may resist ads at first, a great way for advertisers to help with that transition will be to maintain authenticity, respect the platform for what it is, and create engaging content that Redditors can stand behind rather than down-vote repeatedly into oblivion.

The only way to learn more is to test it for yourself.