A Marketer’s Guide to Reddit and Advertising on the Front Page of the Internet

Reddit has long been a place where passionate communities, lurkers, and trolls all come together to share their opinions, memes, and expertise, all within highly active micro-ecosystems. As a self-governed platform, users are able to create their own subreddit communities, establish their own ground rules, and enforce that their community members abide by these rules.

This means Reddit is home to thousands and thousands of subreddits — spanning from useful content like reddit.com/r/travel with 2.8 million members, https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion featuring the latest and greatest deals in men’s fashion, and more obscure content like https://www.reddit.com/r/catsstandingup, which, as you may guess, is just a community sharing pictures of cats standing up. (Any pictures that feature a cat NOT standing up, are removed by the admins).

So, where does an advertiser fit into this ecosystem of highly passionate, sometimes quirky, and highly discerning users? Well, now more than ever, it’s easier for a brand to break into the space based on many newly released features for advertisers. Reddit now has a self-serve, auction-based advertising platform, with many of the same capabilities as you see within the social networks. Advertisers can target ads to specific communities and interests, allowing your brand to reach users who are highly passionate about a certain topic or product.

Sourced from Reddit’s Advertising Platform

In addition to the turnkey auction platform, brands are able to participate in high-impact and custom opportunities, like Reddit’s famous Ask Me Anything series, or even custom high takeovers like this McDonald’s activation.

And, what makes this more interesting is that there are extreme controls when it comes to brand safety. Knowing that Reddit is self-governed, that can make it a very scary place. And we all know how important it is to know that your brand is showing up in safe spaces. To do this on Reddit, you are able to whitelist, blacklist, and keyword block anything that does not appeal to your brand; ensuring your brand is being shown in the best possible light.

Sourced from Reddit Advertising Platform Homepage

Here are three tips and tricks that advertisers should think about when approaching Reddit:

Unearth New Trends: Utilizing social listening tools, you can explore conversation and subreddit comments to understand how people might be thinking and talking about your brand. This can help inform your targeting and creative strategy — reaching users where they are, and in the way they like to be spoken to.

Set Yourself Up for Safety: With Reddit’s user-generated content (UGC) nature, it’s important to understand that users’ have the ability to say whatever they want. Knowing this, you’ll want to make sure you’re applying all the brand safety controls that are important to you up front. In addition, advertisers have the ability to turn off the commenting ability on ads, which gives you an added layer of safety.

Don’t Be Afraid to Test: Since this is a fairly new platform for advertising, it’s important to try new things. Test out video and static and be playful with your copy. It’s important to Think Like a Redditor when you start to dip your toe into the waters.

Whether you’re new to the platform or an expert Redditor, step out of your comfort zone, get creative, and find the community to advertise to that best suits your brand. There’s plenty of opportunities to reach Reddit’s highly-engaged audience no matter your product or service, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Best of luck!