Do Advertisers Need to Start Paying More Attention to Reddit?

This interesting Marketing Land article is well worth a full read. Reddit used to be a scary, inhospitable place for brands, but is that changing?

Reddit got a complete overhaul last year and has started to offer new options to advertisers too.

Reddit is a tech-savvy environment and trolls lurk in its darker corners, but according to Zachary Burt, President of Code for Cash, there are ways to use the platform effectively. “The major issue is that if we leave comments enabled, people occasionally troll.”

“We solved the problem by disabling comments on our ads. We found that the best ads are like text posts; sometimes instead of linking to our job application pages, offsite, we link to another Reddit thread where the applicants can enjoy authentic discussion with their peers, and then decide to apply.”

Source: Reddit

Niche targeting for niche communities

Heather Cooan is the CEO of HDC Digital. “I tend to get a lot of clients that are in the industrial and technical verticals, and I have found that Reddit is a place where their target audience – engineers and IT professionals – hang out,”

“The key is the offer. These folks are very sensitive about what information they are willing to give,” said Cooan, “For example, they are not going to give their information to gain access to a whitepaper, but they will for a schematic.”

The thing is: After the redesign, Reddit reports big engagement gains on what’s a new and friendlier site, but has that converted to users engaging with advertising? Duane Brown is the founder of Take Some Risks Inc:

“Could be our targeting, but we didn’t see a huge jump for our ads. The new site is great, and people on the team use it personally. People can still use the old site and revert back, so it’s hard to know how many people are really using the new site versus the old site.”

The language used here is hardly going to get you scrambling to advertise on Reddit. The fact remains, however, that they’ve added some great options for targeting niches. With some thought, that might work well for some advertisers.

My question to you guys is this: Is Reddit being overlooked unwisely? The platform has over 330 Million active monthly users. That’s more than Pinterest (300 Million) and Twitter (139 Million). Isn’t that degree of exposure worth making a well-targeted effort for?

Cover Photo Source: Arc Digitech