Reddit Advertising in 2022: How Brands Can Get In On The Action

Reddit is the current top choice for advertisers looking to expand their audience and improve return on investment. Brands are spending more and more each year with 2.3 Billion US Dollars expected to be spent in 2022. Often dubbed “the front page of the internet”, the platform is increasingly doing a great job in bringing together people from all walks of life in one place. Currently boasting a diverse array of over 138,000 active subreddits, this social network has grown exponentially since its inception. But just how powerful is it? Boasting an Alexa ranking of 20 globally and a US rank at 7 currently, Reddit is growing more popular with brands every day and will continue to do so well beyond 2022.

How successful are Reddit ads?

According to Pew Research Center, since 2019 Reddit was one of the only 2 platforms that showed growth (the other being YouTube) where they saw an increase from 11% in 2019 to 18% in 2021. But it’s understandable why brands aren’t capitalizing on this platform yet: Reddit’s users are picky as it is with any high-intent channel. If a product or service isn’t up to snuff with their standards, the user community will be right there telling you what they think of your brand—and it won’t be pretty. But if you can sway them to your side, Reddit has the potential for excellence and that lies in how you’re optimizing your ad creatives via very meticulous targeting. Successful ads with optimized creative show around a 5x higher clickthrough rate than usual on a ‘generic’ Reddit ad. Brands have also reported showing an increase in brand recall by 50% vs the usual and they were able to prove that the ad was responsible for helping the company gain about 19 new customers!

Reddit is tackling the video ad front

One of the biggest emerging trends in 2022 for Reddit is video. The performance of video ads on Reddit has been impressive, with higher CTR than other platforms like Facebook and Google. Video ads for Reddit in 2022 will be targeted towards specific subreddits based on what they post about or what they like to watch which is good news for brands and marketers. One of their latest updates to their advertising platform is Conversation Placement ads, which the platform hails as their most engaging ad format. Conversation drives higher whilst offering more cost-effective campaign outcomes, especially when combined with Home, Popular or Community Feed placements. If a brand wants to target both the Reddit Feed and Conversations Placement, these ads can reach millions more unique users than when targeting with a single placement, increasing their overall reach by up to 20%. It’s also worth to note that Adobe were one of the first to test this new ad format where they targeted communities r/photoshopbattles, r/gradschool, and r/applyingtocollege where the results were an average increase in CTR of 20% and a 25% decrease in CPC compared to an in-feed post alone.

Challenges for brands advertising on Reddit.

Reddit users are known to be ‘charged’ to say the least. From fueling an entirely new trend of investors (GME and the now aptly named memestock buzz) to a subreddit moderator being interviewed on the news and receiving viral fame, albeit not a positive one, Redditors (as Reddit users are called), are more active than other social media users not to mention they have a higher attention span. Brands will find that ads that perform well on other platforms such as Facebook or Instagram might not perform as well on Reddit. Reddit CTR behavior also tends to differ as opposed to other platforms. This goes back to what we were saying earlier that Reddit advertising almost requires a strategy of its own (but still able to integrate with an overall online advertising campaign) where the silver bullet is creative and targeting. If a brand doesn’t ensure they are targeting the right subreddits, money basically goes to waste where it’s just clicks from users who aren’t interested in their offerings.

So, you’ve gotten our lowdown on Reddit Ads. Brands and businesses today have to put in a bit more effort to ensure success in their targeted advertising efforts on Reddit. But with these exciting new ad formats that Reddit has to offer, success on the platform comes with different metrics – predominantly awareness and engagement. Reddit’s a great add-on but it’s not your end-all-be-all advertising strategy. If you and your brand want to know more on how to harness platforms such as Reddit and other alternative online advertising channels, get in touch with us for a free strategy audit!

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Reddit is tackling the video ad front

One of the biggest emerging trends in 2022 for Reddit is video. The performance of video ads on Reddit has been impressive, with higher CTR than other platforms like Facebook and Google. Video ads for Reddit in 2022 will be targeted towards specific subreddits based on what they post about or what they like to watch which is good news for brands and marketers. One of their latest updates to their advertising platform is Conversation Placement ads, which the platform hails as their most engaging ad format. Conversation drives higher whilst offering more cost-effective campaign outcomes, especially when combined with Home, Popular or Community Feed placements. If a brand wants to target both the Reddit Feed and Conversations Placement, these ads can reach millions more unique users than when targeting with a single placement, increasing their overall reach by up to 20%. It’s also worth to note that Adobe were one of the first to test this new ad format where they targeted communities r/photoshopbattles, r/gradschool, and r/applyingtocollege where the results were an average increase in CTR of 20% and a 25% decrease in CPC compared to an in-feed post alone.

Image credit: Will Buckner

So, you’ve gotten our lowdown on Reddit Ads. Brands and businesses today have to put in a bit more effort to ensure success in their targeted advertising efforts on Reddit. But with these exciting new ad formats that Reddit has to offer, success on the platform comes with different metrics – predominantly awareness and engagement. Reddit’s a great add-on but it’s not your end-all-be-all advertising strategy. If you and your brand want to know more on how to harness platforms such as Reddit and other alternative online advertising channels, get in touch with us for a free strategy audit! 

Written by Shakh Sidikov, Digital Strategy Director at Massion.io 

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Shakhboz Sidikov
https://massion.io

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