June 23, 2016: Just about three years ago, Didit took a look at the marketing opportunities on Reddit – the edgy social news and entertainment site. While noting that Reddit had marketing potential, we wrote that “we feel that Reddit is best used more for distributing social content into specific welcoming communities, raising brand awareness, and conducting community relations. Any messaging that has the whiff of a sales pitch will be downvoted and destroyed by Redditors, and the site has clear guidelines about what it calls self promotion.”
A lot has changed in 36 months. As Facebook and Google both have clamped down on organic reach, it’s a lot harder to get attention without spending a fortune. At the same time, ad blocking is rising, making it even harder for marketers to use paid media to reach the audiences they target. Should marketers revisit Reddit as a place for paid placements? Perhaps – here’s why:
Reddit is a different place today
Reddit is now (according to its own data) the 9th most visited site in the U.S., with upward of 200 million monthly users, and about 8 billion monthly page views. This audience is highly engaged, with an average user session time of 11 minutes.
Reddit is also becoming more marketer-friendly. Last year, several of its most notorious content areas (“subreddits”) were shut down. In April of this year, it deployed a new blocking tool aimed at curbing the kind of online harassment behavior that no brand wants to stand next to. While both of these moves were met with resistance from some in its user base, Reddit has hinted that they won’t be the last.
According to Adweek, these changes are already easing marketers’ fears, with many big brands – including Coca-Cola, eBay, and P&G — deciding that Reddit might be worth a try.
Reddit now has an auction-based ad platform
Reddit – which in March hired a Google engineer — has also launched an auction-based, self-serve ad platform. Ads can be targeted to run in interest groups, subreddits, or on the Reddit home page. Pricing is CPM-based, and – at least at present, doesn’t include a Quality Score-type bidding adjustment mechanism that rewards high-spending marketers over low and moderate spenders.
In terms of ad formats, Reddit currently offers two formats: text ads and link ads. Text ads will drive users into a Reddit-based discussion; link ads to external URLs. According to Reddit, link ads are the best performers; Reddit claims that “text ads receive 3x as many comments on average than link ads. Text ads also allow you to share a lengthier promotion, whereas link ads are limited to a 300 character headline title.”
Time for a test drive ?
Reddit – compared to other many other web sites accepting advertising – is still a wild and risky place, so it’s not going to be a great match for especially risk-averse marketers. But those willing to take a chance on Reddit now will likely enjoy the kind of first-mover advantage that marketers enjoyed on Google back in the early 2000s. And because Reddit – like self-serve platforms, lets you spend money in small increments, there’s very little financial risk in running some test campaigns that can show you whether advertising on Reddit can help you meet your company’s digital marketing objectives.
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