There are a couple different ways to get your brand in front of Reddit users. Each has different pros, and each has different post types and ad specs associated with it. Choose your own adventure, and size it up:
Promoted posts are the original ad format from Reddit, and they look very similar to normal posts in the platform: they can include text, images, videos, links and carousels.
Promoted posts are a great way to appeal to your audience in a more organic way, since these ads are inserted like normal posts while users scroll on their home, popular or community feed; or during conversations, between the original post and the first comment, as you can see in the image below.
To achieve that organic feeling, you also need to take into account the tone and language of your ad: using a more conversational and authentic tone can make redditors connect better with your content. Since this is a less structured ad, the main focus is making them feel like you’re a peer commenting or making a post.
Reddit Feed Placement
If you made an in-feed promoted post, you can turn on comments to mirror the normal activity of reddit posts and be more authentic, but the default option is off. Turning on comments is also a good way to create an engagement prompt, by asking questions to the community and being able to receive responses with unique perspectives that can add value to your brand and to the community.
Engagement prompts aren’t necessarily included in promoted posts, since they can also be created on your brand’s reddit profile or in a normal post in a subreddit; but if you want to amplify it across communities, then opting for paid promotion is the best choice.
It’s important to remember you can add a Call-To-Action (CTA) button at the right bottom of your ad, to encourage a certain behavior in your audience after they receive your message. You can choose between different CTA buttons according to your goals, like “Sign Up”, “Apply Now”, “Contact us”, and many more.
Currently, promoted videos are a very useful ad structure since they’re one of the top growing formats on Reddit, and they have distinct key features that you can use as a brand to improve the efficiency and appeal of your message: all native videos autoplay in-feed, multiple aspect ratios to choose depending on your preference and a mobile hybrid landing page, that allows split-screen loading and improves the user experience.
Conversational Placement
The Conversation placement allows advertisers to deliver an ad within a conversation thread, beneath the post, and before the comments.
According to Reddit, the average redditor spends 42% of the time in conversation threads: community comments are the place where redditors are most engaged around their interests, so conversational placements give you the opportunity to interact with this immersed audience and get a higher performing campaign (Source: Reddit Internal 2021).
Also, when combined with the reddit feed promoted posts, advertisers get 18% lower CPM, 23% lower CPC and 10% higher downstream, achieving more cost-effective campaign outcomes across the funnel (Source: Reddit Internal 2021).
Bid Types
Promoted posts and videos can be amplified with multiple bid types:
Takeover ads allow you to purchase a fixed number of impressions during a certain period of time. This is a great option when your objective is maximizing the impact of your ad and achieving brand awareness goals.
There are different types of takeovers depending on the place they can be found in the platforms, such as the home page, r/popular, search or even inside communities.
Category takeover:
This type of ad helps you to reach a specific group of users that are most relevant to your brand, being the first ad they’ll see on their feeds, banners and conversations of communities related to a certain category. You can choose this category the ad is going to perform and also the timeframe you think is more appropriate to your goals.
The category takeover package also includes a promoted post (that will be displayed in the first post of any of the subreddits that are inside that category), a top and a sticky banner, and an optional CTA.
Trending takeover:
r/Popular is the second most visited page on reddit, and it shows the current most popular topics and posts in the platform. Doing a trending takeover means that your ad will be displayed for 24 hours on this page, making it a great option to increase awareness when you’re releasing new content, products or events, or to reach new audiences at a big scale. When a user visits the popular page, the ad will be seen in the second slot of the Trending today module.
This module can also be found when a user clicks in the Search tab, so when they search for keywords related to your campaign, they’ll come across your brand on their recommendation.
Front Page Takeover:
This type of takeover includes both Home and Popular pages, so your ad will be the first one the users will see when they visit these places. It also comes in a package that includes promoted posts (that will display at the top when a user visits the home page), top banners and sticky banners.
This type of ad allows a 100% reach of the Front Page for 24 hours, including inventory across desktop and mobile and along the right rail. But if you are looking for a less impact option to achieve a broad reach, then the First View takeover is a similar option you can try instead: with First View Takeovers, your brand can own the first unique ad impression on Reddit’s Home & Popular pages
Reddit Takeover:
This is the most impactful and widest reaching takeover package. You can think of it as a Front Page and Trending Takeover combined: promoted posts, top banners, sticky banners, trending unit on popular, trending unit on search and trending landing page all included in one package. During 24 hours, when users visit Reddit, they’ll see your brand on all the inventory we mentioned above.
With Reddit Takeover you get 100% reach of prime real estate across all Popular, Search and Front page (home).