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Reddit Advertising: 7 Things You Should Know Before Digging In
Reddit Advertising: It’s Easy to Get Started!
So you’re here to learn about Reddit Advertising. You’ve come to the right spot! I promise we’ll cover much of what you need to know to learn to basics of getting started with Reddit Advertising.
My Current Ads Aren’t Performing 😩
Let’s face it, sometimes advertising on the usual giant social media platforms gets stale. You can build loads of different audiences, lookalikes, do retargeting, and run A/B test after A/B test. At some point, though, you’ll hit a roadblock. What is an advertiser to do?
Diversify. Try new advertising platforms!
The good news is that there are plenty of other advertising platforms out there. It might seem overwhelming, but the expansiveness of the digital ads-mosphere is awesome for advertisers. As long as you know who your audience is, you’ll be able to find the right platform where they’ll see your ads.
In this article, I’d like to educate you on the exciting world of Reddit Advertising. By the time you’ve finished reading this list of things you need to know about Reddit Ads, I hope you’re able to decide if the platform makes sense for you. If not, no biggie, at least now you know!
1. What is Reddit?
Reddit is a content sharing and discovery platform. The platform is organized into a series of categories (or communities) called subreddits. There are broad and popular subreddits as well as niche and targeted subreddits. Subreddits are comprised of links to stories, photos, or videos that Reddit users (otherwise known as Redditors) submit to the community. Depending on the subreddit, you can find text posts such as questions and sometimes even just statements and observations.
2. Reddit Demographics: Why Advertise Here?
Of course, knowing who is on the platform is the best place to start. Reddit is predominantly used by men, but if your brand has more of a female user-base, don’t be so quick to write off Reddit Ads. First and foremost, because I’m a female and an avid Redditor. The other reason I’d encourage female-focused brands to consider Reddit Ads is because there are plenty of subreddits filled with active female Redditors on a variety of topics. More on that later.
As you can see in this demographics chart, at 33%, the largest share of Redditors are in the 25-34-year-old age bracket. The next greatest share at 26% is the 18-24-year-olds, followed closely at 22% are the 35-44-year-old Redditors. Finally, at 14% of the Reddit user base, we have 45-54-year-olds and the 55-64-year-olds rounding out the final 5% share of the user base.
3. Reddit Advertising Cost: How Much? 💰
If you’ve advertised on other platforms, you already know many of the usual suspects have a minimum required ad spend. Reddit Advertising is no different. Fortunately, at $5 a day to meet the required minimum, you’re likely not going to break the bank if you just want to take Reddit Ads for a test drive.
4. Reddit Ad Campaign Setup ⚙️
Reddit Advertising Objectives
Reddit Auction units are self-serve, and probably the starting point for anyone new to advertising on the platform. The Brand Awareness objective Reddit Ads are available to buy on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis–or every 1,000 impressions. Other objectives include Traffic, Conversions, and App Installs (all cost-per-click) and Video Views (cost-per-view).
Audiences
Just like any modern digital platform, Reddit has a pixel retargeting audience option. Obviously, if it’s your first campaign on Reddit Ads, you won’t be able to use this option. Installing the Reddit pixel and gathering that data is always a smart idea, though, because you can always work towards building retargeting campaigns in the future once you obtain enough data.
What’s really exciting about Reddit Advertising is the Reddit Audience feature. When it comes to advertising on Reddit, you can get outstanding results. There’s a caveat to that statement though. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you must know your audience!
(Puts soap box away) So here’s a list of all of the different interests you can target on Reddit Ads:
- Animals & Pets
- Art & Design
- Automotive
- Business & Finance
- Entertainment
- Family & Relationships
- Food & Drink
- Gaming
- Healthy Living
- News & Education
- Sports
- Style & Fashion
- Technology & Computing
- Television
- Travel
But wait, there’s more! Within each of those interest categories, there are subcategories. You can get really granular with the interest targeting on Reddit Ads. For example, under the Gaming category, there are subcategories: Video Gaming, eSports, PC Games, and Tabletop Games. What’s great is if any of those subcategories don’t apply to your brand, you can easily delete them from your targeting and only target the subcategory that makes sense for you.
You can also target your audience by way of device, location (only at the state/country and DMA level at this time), and time of day. If you have a minimum of 1000 records, you can get into custom audiences–but this is definitely not advisable for beginners.
5. Creative for Reddit Advertising: Best Practices & Tips 🎨
When you’re just starting out with Reddit, it might take a little bit of testing to get a hang of what the proper approach is for the platform. That’s nothing to worry about! In fact, it can potentially enlighten you about your audience in ways you might not otherwise have expected!
An effective way to kick off your testing efforts is to launch the same ad with vastly different headlines. Reddit recommends in this testing phase that you experiment with tone, length, attitude, and offering when coming up with various headlines to consider.
Another method of testing your creative is to use the same headline, but launch a few ads with vastly different visuals. Play around with color, shapes, formatting, and styles.
6. Reddit Ad Placements: How They Look 🏷
What do ads on Reddit look like and where do they show up? Well, there are a couple of different options to choose from when doing self-serve auction ads. If you want to make a big splash and you have a six-figure budget to match, Reddit Takeover Ads are always an option.
But for those of us who aren’t ready to sink a hundred thousand dollars on a Takeover placement, there are Feed Placements and Conversation Placements. With either of these placements, you can get super granular with your targeting, which is the dream for most advertisers!
Reddit Advertising Feed Placements
Display your ads to Redditors who are scrolling through their Home and Popular feeds, as well as individual community subreddits.
Reddit Conversation Placement Ads
Get your ads in front of Redditors who are joining the conversation with others on a specific post. The ad appears in a fixed spot between the post and the first comment.
Want to reach even more users than those you’d find in the Feed? Everybody who makes it as far as actually clicking on a post has gone beyond scrolling to engage with ideas, questions, and answers they’re genuinely curious about or interested in. This means your ad could be a part of the buzz, driving incremental campaign results for your brand.
7. Reddit Ads Reporting: Results 📊
What good is trying a new ad platform without reporting? That’s obviously a silly question, but my point is that, of course, there’s a Reddit Ads dashboard. The Reddit Ads dashboard has features like Breakdowns, Success Metrics, and Filtering.
Breakdowns
You can better comprehend your ad performance and optimize your targeting by using breakdowns. With breakdowns, you’re able to dive into performance within different Subreddits & Interests, Geography, Platform, and Date.
Success Metrics
Another way to customize your reporting view is by choosing to see only the metrics you care about. Certainly, if you have installed the Reddit Pixel (which you should do!), you can view multiple types of conversions as a success metric. Other success metrics include engagement (such as Upvotes and Downvotes), and video-related metrics, like video views, full video views, video plays with sound, and so on.
Filtering
Filtering is fairly common in advertising reporting, so naturally, the Reddit Ads dashboard supports a solid filtering function. Drill down on your campaigns further by selecting your campaign name, ad group name, or ad name. Then, search by “is” or “contains”, enter a partial name in the box a voila, your very specific reporting view!
Summary
There you have it, a crash course on all the things you should know before digging into Reddit Advertising. In this post, we covered some pretty important topics, like why you should consider Reddit Advertising, what Reddit is, who uses Reddit, and how much it costs to advertise on Reddit. We also talked about setting up a campaign on Reddit, what kinds of creatives work on Reddit Ads, Reddit Ad placements, and Reddit Ads reporting functionality. It might have seemed like a long and overwhelming post, but if you’re anything like me, once you jump into the platform yourself, you’ll get the hang of it. If you don’t have the time or desire to do all of that legwork, please don’t hesitate to reach out! We’d love to hear from you and learn about what your advertising goals are for Reddit Ads.
