By now it’s likely that you’ve, at the very least, heard of Reddit. While it’s always been popular, its popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, and now you’d be hard-pressed to find a Google search result that doesn’t contain a link to Reddit.
Reddit is great for many things—finding information, staying up-to-date on the latest news, sharing memes, having conversations, etc.
But it’s particularly great for businesses to learn more about—and connect with—their audience.
While there are several ways you can leverage Reddit for free, I wanted to focus now on the paid ways to leverage the platform: ads.
Reddit ads are much like Reddit itself; similar to other platforms, while also being entirely unique with its own unspoken etiquette—excuse me, Reddiquette—that influences both the perception of and reaction to a post, comment, or ad.
At this point, you might be thinking: are Reddit ads even worth it?
The answer is yes.
Why Advertise On Reddit?
Reddit ads provide an opportunity to speak directly to your customers and connect with your audience in meaningful ways, right where they’re already engaged.
And, as it turns out, a lot of Redditors actually want to see businesses on Reddit sharing information about their products and services—79% of them, in fact!
Now, that alone is a good—dare I say great—reason to get started. But, if you’re not convinced, there are several other reasons why Reddit ads are particularly beneficial to any small business owner.
High Trust in the Platform
Reddit is (basically) the first place people go to for research.
Over 100 people add “Reddit” to their Google searches every second.
Even further, 90% of users turn to—and trust—Reddit when researching a brand or product.
With this level of trust, it comes as no surprise that Reddit has a lot of influence on purchasing and decision-making.
According to Reddit, Reddit users are 46% more likely to trust a brand because it’s advertised on Reddit instead of other sites—and nearly ⅔ of Redditors would purchase a product if they saw an ad about it on Reddit.
Target Hyper-Focused Audiences
With over 100,000 active subreddits, Reddit genuinely has a community for everything. So, even if you’re a super specific, niche business, I’m willing to bet there’s a community out there for you.
Diverse (And Curious!) Users
Reddit has an impressive audience. I’m talking “over 379 million weekly active users (with 151 million of those being from the U.S. alone)” impressive. 😮💨
And that audience is incredibly unique and varied! Reddit users come from all walks of life, and span across multiple generations:
- 41% of users are between 18-34 years old
- 20% of users are between 34-44 years old
- 34% of users are 45 and older
Given the nature of Reddit, it should come as no surprise that many Redditors are naturally curious and research-driven.
As such, many Redditors are incredibly engaged and discerning, especially when it comes to discovering new brands, products, or services that align with their interests.
So, when your ad reaches the right user, your brand isn’t just seen—it’s kickstarting an entire process of learning, reading, and making decisions about your business.
96% of user actions on Reddit—like checking out brand sites, browsing product pages, adding items to their cart, and even making purchases—actually happen after someone sees an ad but doesn’t click.
So, even the presence of your ads on Reddit can influence perception, build awareness, and make a real impact for your business!
Plus Redditors can be anyone—CEOs, managers, entrepreneurs, and everyday consumers alike use the platform. So your ideal audience is not out of reach.
According to a survey, 78% of decision-makers on Reddit agree that Reddit helps them make faster purchasing decisions when buying business products or solutions.
So, whether your target audience is early-20’s men who work in finance, or mid-30s women into gaming, you’ll likely find an eager audience on Reddit.
Reach Audiences Not Found Elsewhere
There’s no shortage of social media ad options. So, why Reddit?
Well, to start, Reddit reports that advertisers can see up to 3x ROAS and +3.1% total sales lift when advertising on Reddit (as opposed to other social media platforms).
And as it turns out, a lot of Reddit users aren’t even found on other social media platforms.
- 30% of Redditors are not on Facebook
- 45% of Redditors are not on Instagram
- 58% of Redditors are not on TikTok
- 59% of Redditors are not on Twitter/X
- 63% of Redditors are not on Pinterest
- 68% of Redditors are not on LinkedIn
- 74% of Redditors are not on Snapchat
- 81% of Redditors are not on Twitch
With numbers like that, it’s hard to argue.
Plus, when it comes to viewing ads on Reddit vs. other social media platforms, Redditors make 2x more purchases, and have 2.5x higher order value.
Authenticity and Connection
Reddit values authenticity and connection.
Sharing advice, swapping stories, providing insight—these are all key tenets of the Reddit ecosystem.
But what makes it different from other platforms? The difference is that these conversations and interactions happen openly—and honestly.
Reddit isn’t an echo chamber of “yes men.” So, when someone asks for advice on where to buy reliable work boots, the answers are incredibly real and genuine.
The conversations that happen on Reddit do more than just build community—they can directly influence purchasing. In fact, roughly 75% of shoppers on Reddit say they make faster purchases based on these conversations about other Redditors’ experiences.
So for a business that is trying to connect with their audience, share the value of their products and services, and stay authentic to themselves and their brand? Reddit Ads can help.
Because in short: people go to Reddit for answers, and you want to be there when they do.
Reddit Ad Formats
Reddit’s ad formats are highly native, aligning closely with organic content on the platform. This means they’re usually non-disruptive in nature and seamlessly integrated within the content stream.
If I’m being honest, there’s been more than a few times I’ve mistaken an ad for just another bizarre, ironic meme on a subreddit.
But that’s not a bad thing! Non-intrusive ads actually offer an overall more pleasant experience, helping you cut through the influx of loud, disruptive ads that many consumers are growing tired of seeing on a daily basis.
There are two Reddit ad formats: Promoted Posts and High Impact.
Promoted Post Ad Formats
Promoted Posts are the most common type of Reddit ads. They appear in a user’s feed, look like organic posts, and generally don’t disrupt the scrolling experience. There are several types of promoted posts you can choose as your ad format, each with its own benefit and approach.
Tip: Reddit also allows you to combine different ad formats to reach more users.
Image
Image ads are exactly as they sound—ads that contain static images. The image can be of a product, a meme, a graphic…whatever will grab attention and convey your message best! Then, Redditors can click either the image or the caption to go to your page.
Video
Video ads consist of any type of relevant video and a caption. Videos can be anywhere from 2 seconds up to 15 minutes long, and will autoplay in a Redditor’s feed.
Carousel
Carousel ads allow you to show multiple images or videos together in one convenient ad. Carousel ads can contain up to 6 images, giving you ample space to take potential customers on a journey, or showcase multiple products.
Free-form
Free-form ads are wholly unique to Reddit. Designed to replicate and integrate with the Reddit experience, these ads are essentially posts. In them, you can combine text with any form of media (such as GIFS, videos, images, etc.)
Conversation
Similar to free-form ads, conversation ads are also unique to Reddit. They can appear either below a post but before the comments, or between comments in the conversation thread, helping your brand break beyond the feed and meet Redditors where they have authentic conversations.
Shopping and Product Ads [Beta]
While currently in beta, product ads offer a unique way to provide Redditors with their perfect shopping experience. There are currently two types: Dynamic and traditional.
Dynamic ads allow brands to create ads directly from their product catalog. From there, Reddit will, in their own words: “…dynamically serve the right product, to the right person, at the right time, in the right Reddit context from your product catalog.”
Traditional product ads are a bit more straightforward, and require brands to manually select specific products to be shown in their ad.
AMA
Promoted AMAs (Ask Me Anything) are done live, making them a great way to foster genuine connections, answer questions, and engage with your community. AMA ads allow you to promote your AMA across Reddit, while also allowing users to enable reminders for the AMA. After the AMA is done, users can still find and read the AMA.
High Impact Ad Formats
The other ad option is High Impact ads. High Impact ads have a bit more, well… impact. They allow you to combine multiple formats into one, and display them in prioritized spots. Currently, there are three High Impact offerings.
Note: High Impact ads are only available by talking with a sales representative.
24 Hour Reddit Takeover
A Reddit Takeover allows your brand to hold the first ad slot across a user’s home feed and the popular feed for 24 hours.
Category Takeover
Category Takeover ads allow you to be the first seen in communities that fall under your selected category. For example, if you choose “gaming” your ad will be seen across the feed, banners, and in conversations, of subreddits that fall under the “gaming” category.
First View
First View ads allow your brand to be seen first by Redditors by being the first in-feed ad. Your ad will also be shown first on Reddit’s Home and Popular feeds, making them even more impactful. You can also upgrade to First View Plus, which will also place your ad in the trending section of the popular feed!
Now that you know the ad types, let’s talk a bit about ad creation.
Creating Your Campaign
Creating a Reddit Ad campaign is a straightforward process—if you’ve done other paid ad campaigns, this process will likely be similar.
Campaign Setup
To get started, you’ll want to cover the basic steps:
- Create your Reddit Ads account
- Add payment method
- Name your campaign
Set Your Objective
Next, you’ll want to set your objective.
Reddit has several objectives, most of which can be used for any ad type. They include:
- Brand awareness and reach: Increase awareness about your product or brand.
- Traffic: Drive traffic to your website or specific location.
- Conversions: Encourage Redditors to perform specific conversion actions. Learn more about specific conversion goals here.
- Video views: Increase views on your video.
- App installs: Drive Redditors to install your iOS or Android mobile application.
- Catalog sales (beta): Increase retail sales.
- Lead generation (beta): Capture leads with forms.
Depending on your objective, you might have to connect or set up accounts to measure performance. For example, if your objective is traffic, you’ll have to set up Reddit Pixel—a portion of code that allows you to track actions visitors take after seeing or clicking your ad on Reddit.
Define and Select Ad Group
With your objective set, it’s time to move on to forming your ad group and display information.
First, name your ad group, before moving on to the next step: targeting.
Audience and Targeting
Reddit ads offer robust targeting abilities that help your brand get seen by your audience. You can also combine targeting options, allowing for a more focused approach. After all, what good is advertising if the right people aren’t seeing it?
There are several targeting options for Reddit audiences ads:
- Community Targeting: Ads will be shown to Redditors who have interacted with your specific communities.
- Interest Targeting: Target Redditors based on their hobbies, passions, or areas of expertise.
- Keyword Targeting: Target Redditors based on specific keywords, phrases, or searches relevant to your product or services.
- Custom Targeting: Allows you to have an entirely customized approach, such as website retargeting, lookalike audiences, and more.
- Location Targeting: Target specific countries, regions, cities, and postal codes.
- Device Targeting: Target desktop-only, mobile-only, or both desktop and mobile users.
- Gender Targeting: Target based on gender identity.
- Time of Day Targeting: Target users on specific days of the week and time of day.
When targeting keywords, communities, and interests, you can enable automatic targeting, which will expand your ads’ reach to users beyond your specific Reddit audience when it’s likely to improve the ad’s performance.
Ad Placement and Delivery
After choosing your audience and targeting, you’ll select your ad placement. Ads can go in feed, conversations (right above the comment section), or both.
Then you’ll choose your delivery, which includes:
- Budget: How much you want to spend, at what speed (daily or lifetime).
- Bidding: How much money you’re bidding, and bidding strategy.
- Schedule: Choose to run continuously starting the day you create your ad, or set up specific start and end dates.
Learn more about bidding, budgeting, and Reddit’s recommendations here.
Create Your Ad
Now it’s time for the fun part!
After naming your new ad, you’ll want to create it. Since it’s new, this will involve selecting an ad format (that I reviewed above), uploading your assets, and adding necessary information such as:
- Headline
- Destination URL
- Display URL
- Call to Action
Be sure to check out Reddit’s creative best practices and double-check your ad specifications before creating anything. There are key components—like captions for videos, or optimizing for mobile display—that can directly impact the effectiveness of your campaign. They even have a helpful checklist to make sure your ads are good to go!
After uploading, filling out, and selecting the necessary information, you’ll have to add your preferred tracker.
At this point, you’ll be able to toggle comments on or off. I’ll talk a bit more about that below though, so just hang tight.
Tip: Reddit has their official library of past ads that allows you to view ads based on type, industry, budget, and more. For some more inspiration, Reddit User ElectroPigeon made their own Reddit Ad library full of unique and interesting ads.
Preview and Submit for Review
After moving on from ad creation, you’ll be able to review everything you just did, from campaign type all the way to your creatives. After you’ve double-checked everything, you’ll submit your ad for review.
Reddit reviews all ads before they go live, and typically you’ll get approved or rejected within 24 hours.
And that’s it!
Yay! 🥳
Tip: Reddit also has Simple Create, which helps streamline the ad process!
How to Have a Successful Reddit Ad Campaign
If I’ve done my job well, you should have one final question: How can I be successful with Reddit ads?
While nobody can absolutely guarantee success, I do have a few tips—and no shortage of examples—to help you get started on the right foot.
#1: Spend Time on Reddit
Like I’ve said, Redditors value the authenticity and connection Reddit can provide… and it’s kind of hard to make an authentic ad for a platform if you’ve never used it yourself.
So, spend a little time familiarizing yourself with the platform!
Check out different subreddits and take the time to understand and seek out niche communities that would benefit from your product or service. Don’t forget to pop into the comment sections, too, as getting insight into how conversations on Reddit can go is incredibly beneficial.
I’ve been an avid Reddit user for years. My account is in the double digits, and I was a lurker before that.
Suffice it to say, I spend a lot of time on Reddit. More importantly, I know a lot about Reddit.
Again, Reddit is unlike any other social platform. It comes with its own set of unspoken rules, inside jokes shared by millions of users, and an altogether different experience—marketing or otherwise.
For example, hashtags serve no purpose (except for markdown formatting) on Reddit. So if I see a post with hashtags in the titles, I (and others) instantly know it’s someone’s first time here.
And it certainly isn’t a place where a generic ad with inauthentic copy will thrive.
By joining the Reddit community yourself, you’ll be able to better understand its intricacies and even start to pick up on common jokes, phrases, and references, which can ultimately help you create a more effective ad.
In fact, brands that incorporate Reddit lingo experience a 201% higher advertiser median revenue.
For example, take this ad promoting Caliber.
By starting with his knowledge of Reddit, he was able to anticipate possible points of contention and align himself with the audience. For what it’s worth, this creator also did an absolutely stellar job fostering a community in the comment section.
#2: Start With Your End Goal
Before you get into ad creation, think about what your end goal is for your ad campaign.
Do you want to establish your brand on Reddit? Make sales? Get leads? Drive traffic to your website?
By starting with your end goal in mind, you can check that every step of your strategy aligns to make it happen, whether it’s the ad format itself or the content of the creatives for the ad.
It can also inform how you engage with the ad once it’s live. For example, if you want to establish your brand on Reddit, you might want to leave ad comments on, and ensure you dedicate time to actively engaging with users.
#3 Design With Your Audience in Mind
As I mentioned above, Reddit does have a ton of information regarding creative best practices. But beyond that, it’s important to keep your audience in mind when designing your ad.
To start, Reddit itself reports that 75% of users access Reddit on their mobile devices. So, unless you are specifically targeting desktop users, I suggest creating an ad that’s optimized for mobile. This ensures that your audience on their phones can clearly see your ad.
If you’re creating a video ad, you should consider adding closed captions. For one, a lot of Redditors scroll silently during the day, so captions can grab their attention and convey the necessary information. This extra consideration can go a long way, with Reddit reporting that brands who use closed captioning in their ads see a 2.1x positive life in brand favorability.
Lastly, be authentic and transparent in your ad copy.
While nobody likes sneaky selling, Redditors especially hate it. So, whether you call it out in a self-deprecating way like Oreida does below, or you keep it straightforward, make your ad copy—and your branding—clear…especially if your ad mimics the look of an organic post.
#4 Get Creative with Your Creatives
If your ad involves a visual component, you’ll want to ensure you nail it.
Much like you’ll want to design with your audience in mind, you should also consider what you’re advertising, and how you’re advertising it.
Beyond choosing effective photos, now’s also the time to get a bit creative.
Reddit is a great place for fun, creative, and humor-based ads. So, this is a great opportunity to branch out and create a more lighthearted ad—if it makes sense for your brand, of course.
I’ve seen ads of all types—some embrace absurdity, some sprinkle in some jokes or puns, and some play off of Reddit tropes.
But memes are arguably the most popular design choice on Reddit.
I, personally, love a good meme. But when it comes to Reddit ads, my suggestion would be to make extra sure it’s relevant to your audience and message.
And as silly as it may sound, it’s important to make sure you understand the meme—both how it’s used, and the context. Some reaction images/memes can stem from more serious subjects, so it’s essential to double check a meme’s meaning and the context surrounding it beforehand.
Tip: Keep an open mind when it comes to choosing creative elements for ads. As seen in the example below, watercolor brand Iuile Watercolors had static images for their ad. In the comments, they received some constructive feedback from real people. This not only gave the brand a chance to adjust their strategy to better align with what their audience wants, but also gave them the chance to directly engage with that potential customer.
#5 Consider Comments on Ads
Alright, let’s talk comments.
When you create your ad, you’ll have the option to toggle comments on.
There are definitely pros and cons to leaving comments off or turning them on.
As I’ve mentioned before, Redditors are nothing if not opinionated. So, you can rest assured that, good or bad, they will tell you their thoughts.
That’s kind of the point of the platform, after all.
Can brands miss the mark and deal with some comments trolling them? Yes.
But don’t be scared.
It’s just how Reddit is. I’ve seen comments ranging from pushback/upset with the ad, positive comments, questions, concerns, props, and no shortage of NSFW (not safe for work) ASCII art.
I genuinely mean it when I say that a lot of Redditors are very vocal about the brands they love and are loyal to. As such, a lot of businesses choose to keep comments on and use the comment section as a chance to educate and connect.
This also shows a willingness to engage, which helps audiences connect with a brand faster.
You can have fun and engage in playful ways, or even poke fun at yourself like this Oatly example, but of course, be mindful, practice good Reddiquette, and don’t feed the trolls.
So, while it’s completely understandable why brands turn comments off, a lot of Redditors—myself included—have an immense amount of respect for a business that keeps them on.
To show you a bit more, let’s look at an example from the brand Oats Overnight.
Oats Overnight
Now, full disclosure: I don’t even like eating overnight oats.
At all.
Store-bought or homemade.
So, I’m really not the target demographic for Oats Overnight.
But, solely due to their ads and presence on Reddit, I kind of love Oats Overnight. And if I did like overnight oats, they’d be the first brand I’d buy from. Who knows, I might just buy some next time I go to the store!
And I’m not alone.
Oats Overnight consistently does a fantastic job of engaging in their comment section—particularly on this post. (Fair warning—that comment section is NSFW.)
I highly recommend you take some time to look through the comments on that ad. They’re always responsive and their responses have garnered them some more praise from fellow Redditors.
And while they’re quick-witted and often match the comment’s energies, they also provide genuine answers and responses, as seen below.
So… Should You Leave Comments On?
Ultimately, it’s up to you and your capacity—and willingness—to engage.
I completely understand why brands turn comments off. It makes sense, especially if you don’t have the time or energy to be monitoring your ad 24/7.
But, the sense of community a comment section can bring is such a unique benefit to Reddit. Plus, Reddit gives you a lot of control over the comment section, such as the ability to delete them.
Additionally, you can always toggle off comments on your ads. So, even if your ad already has comments on it, you can turn the ability off and delete said comments.
So, my advice? If you are at all interested—even a little bit—I encourage you to get in the comments.
Finishing up
Reddit is a tremendous tool for any business, and Reddit ads have tremendous potential to help your business.
Just stay authentic. Find your communities. Try to make real connections. All that good stuff.
Once you understand the platform, the rest will fall into place.
