Everything Our Paid Team Learned From Attempting a Reddit Advertising Strategy

A Reddit advertising strategy used to be reserved for businesses targeting men. But the tides are turning, and I think it’s time for more brands to consider advertising on Reddit.

While Reddit has always had more male users and still has an audience of 63.6% male users, Reddit’s visibility on Google has increased since its new partnership was announced in February 2024.

According to Backlinko, the increase in users on Reddit since Q4-2023 is undeniable. I predict the audiences will slowly balance as more women discover Reddit and find it’s not the male-only social media platform that people think.

If you’re still not convinced that Reddit has great potential for advertising, let me remind you that it has been one of the top ten most popular sites on the internet for some time. Reddit is undoubtedly an intriguing channel for advertising purposes.

In this article, learn what our team figured out about advertising on Reddit and whether it's worth the attempt for your own company. Plus, I’ve provided a step-by-step tutorial on how you can advertise on Reddit if you determine it’s a valuable option for your own company.

Table of Contents

• What is Reddit, and how has it changed?
• How does advertising on Reddit work?
• The Strategy Behind Reddit Advertising
• Reddit Advertising Cost
• Advertising on Reddit: Worth it?
• How to Advertise on Reddit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Reddit Ads

What is Reddit, and how has it changed?

Reddit is a social media platform with a mission “to bring community, belonging, and empowerment to everyone in the world.”

Notably, for advertisers, Reddit has communities within the platform that are called subreddits. Within subreddits, people talk about topics or special interests in detail. For example, r/pottery is home to 205,000 pottery lovers.

It’s thought that there are over 3 million subreddits on the platform, so there’s a place for everyone. The top communities are listed here.

As hinted in the intro, Reddit has grown quickly in the last year thanks to a partnership with Google. The graph from Backlinko shows considerable growth from Q4-2023 onwards. It’s not a coincidence that the Google and Reddit partnership was in Q1-2024.

Source

Reddit appears at the top of Google more than ever, making it one of Google’s most visible social media platforms. With this, more people have discovered it, hence the recent growth.

I predict that changes in Reddit’s visibility will continue to result in more users joining the platform and the user demographics changing.

How does advertising on Reddit work?

Reddit advertising works similarly to ads on other social media platforms, but what Reddit has that others don’t is highly targeted users.

The main difference is that you can promote posts within specific communities (the subreddits). You can also target broader audiences on Reddit.

Below is a detailed step-by-step guide to setting up your Reddit advertising account.

The Strategy Behind Reddit Advertising

1. Identify subreddit topics that are well-aligned with your target audience.

To investigate the benefits of advertising on Reddit, I first spoke with Josh Chang, a Senior Marketing Manager at HubSpot. He told me HubSpot’s initial strategy on Reddit involved highly targeted campaigns on specific subreddits, including r/entrepreneur and r/sales.

“The goal of the campaign,” Chang explained, “was to drive awareness and conversion for our products. In terms of results, we saw cost-per-acquisition similar to what we’ve achieved on Facebook in North America, although we did notice a lower activation rate from Reddit — suggesting lower-quality conversions.”

If you’re interested in testing out a campaign for yourself, you’ll want to start by identifying subreddits that can likely help foster genuine connections between your brand and your ideal audience.

Consider topics your target audience is most interested in and list them out. Then, narrow your list by investigating how many subscribers each subreddit topic has, whether it’s relatively active, and whether self-promotion or sharing content is allowed on the subreddit topic.

Chang told me, “One of the main things we learned was targeting subreddits specifically was much more effective than broader interest targeting. However, this strategy requires a lot of research, and getting to know which subreddits are most relevant to your audience.

“We noticed tailoring our ad creative for individual subreddits helped improve our conversion rates.”

Pro tip: When you’ve found subreddits you like, use Reddit’s filter to find hot topics within the community. You might be able to associate such topics with your ads to encourage engagement.

2. Begin engaging with your subreddit communities.

Once you’ve cultivated a list of subreddits that are likely of interest to your target audience, it’s time to start engaging with those subreddit communities.

However, it’s critical you don’t begin by promoting your own content.

To build a level of trust and authentic connection, begin by upvoting other submissions you find interesting and that align well with your brand. Next, share valuable content — but not your own. Instead, post interesting content produced by other media outlets or blogs that you believe will be useful to your subreddit community.

I think it’s vital you genuinely use the Reddit platform as an opportunity to get to know your target audience before you offer them your own content. Not only will this show your community you’re not simply joining the site to self-promote, but it will also help you tailor your content more accurately down-the-road.

Pro tip: Transparency is really important on Reddit. In my opinion, don’t try to disguise who you are. I’ve seen some businesses go into Reddit as if they were giving genuine advice but are actually advertising the company they work for.

There’s nothing wrong about vouching for your company on Reddit, but I think it should be done transparently. Redditors don’t typically love advertising!

3. Begin promoting your own content, paid or otherwise, on the subreddit platforms.

At this point, you might consider simply posting valuable content from your company that you feel will benefit your community — for free.

However, you might alternatively try spending money on a paid sponsored post, which essentially guarantees your post will be pinned to the top of the subreddit.

Here’s what a sponsored post looks like, for context:

Alternatively, you can place ads in comments, as pictured below.

In many ways, this post looks similar to all other Reddit content. However, there’s a blue “Promoted” tag in the top left, signifying it’s a paid ad.

In HubSpot’s case, we decided to test out the power of paid advertising on the site. However, it’s still critical you follow the steps listed above to cultivate authentic relationships with your subreddit communities.

Think of it this way. If I begin engaging with a brand on one of the subreddit groups I’ve joined and notice they typically post helpful content (including content from other publications), then I’m much more likely to take notice when they pay for a sponsored post. If they appear out of nowhere, I have no sense of brand awareness and probably won’t trust the advertisement.

Reddit Advertising Cost

As of right now, the minimum daily spend for an ad on Reddit is $5.

Reddit uses an auction-based model, meaning your ads compete against others. Your bid and targeting choices will affect how well your ads perform. Additionally, Reddit charges on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.

Reddit FAQ states, “Since Reddit Ads relies on real-time, live auctions to deliver ads to users, your ad group may overspend its budget by up to 20%. Changes to ad group budgets may take up to 60 minutes to take effect.”

I think this breakdown from Reddit is really helpful when it comes time to make your strategy:

Source

Advertising on Reddit: Worth it?

Reddit provides a lot of content on Reddit advertising, so you can determine if Reddit advertising is worth it for you.

I asked Chang whether he felt advertising on Reddit is a worthwhile investment, and he offered a candid response, admitting HubSpot has temporarily halted its efforts on Reddit.

“We saw promising results,” Chang told me. “But because we were targeting specific subreddits, it wasn’t crazy volume that could really move the needle. However, we have on our docket to re-test Reddit to see if we can improve performance and scalability in the future.”

I think it’s important to note, there have been success stories. For example, Taktical, a Reddit marketing agency, shares case studies resulting in 220% increase in customers for a skincare brand advertising in /r/SkinCareAddiction.

How to Advertise on Reddit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Reddit Ads

1. Make a company profile.

You’ll want to ensure you’re running advertising campaigns on your company profile, not your personal Reddit account.

Along with evoking a sense of professionalism, a company Reddit profile is necessary since users can click on your account and see other content you’ve viewed and upvoted — so you want to ensure that the content aligns well with your brand.

Additionally, when responding to comments on your ad, you’ll want to be able to respond from a company profile, not a personal one.

To set up a profile, go to https://ssl.reddit.com/login and fill out the Sign-Up form, shown below:

2. Set up an advertising account.

To start advertising on Reddit, you’ll need to set up an advertising account. To do this, go to ads.reddit.com and fill out the necessary fields.

Note: Once I created my advertising account, I was hit with a pop-up and the promise of $500 if I spent $500. Not bad for a first-timer on Reddit who may need some time to get used to the platform.

Next, you’ll meet the dashboard, as shown below:

Before you can begin advertising on Reddit, you’ll want to add your billing information. If your billing information isn’t added, Reddit will present a red banner at the top. Click the banner, and a pop-up for billing details will appear.

Important note: If multiple people on your team will be involved in advertising on Reddit, ensure you add users by managing permissions. You can find all of your account details in your business manager.

You can find “business manager” by rolling over the settings cog:

From here, you can view your business manager (pictured below) and navigate to members. Add their emails and permission level (including “Analyst,” “Creator,” and “Administrator”):

Once you’ve clicked the blue “Invite” button, your colleagues should receive an email with the next steps.

3. Find your audience on subreddits.

I think I should mention that you don’t want to spend money advertising on the homepage of Reddit. Reddit users visit the homepage to browse popular posts and trending news, so it’s too big of an audience for you to target your ideal persona.

Instead, I recommend exploring subreddits to find your ideal Reddit audience. For instance, let’s say you sell ecommerce software. To find an interested audience, then, you’ll want to explore retail-related subreddits, such as r/retail (25K members), r/AskRetail (9.4K members), or even r/retailmemes (2.1K members).

Make a list of subreddits that might fit your audience, and then spend some time perusing the content that already exists on that subreddit. Does it seem to match the content your customer would be interested in?

Additionally, does it look like the subreddit community could be filled with high-intent prospects (like a retail advice subreddit), or is it too superficial for your needs (like retail memes)?

To help you find your audience, I suggest trying a tool like RedditList to sort through various Reddit communities and find the ones of highest value for you.

4. Ensure the subreddit(s) you find have enough page views.

I think this is important enough to warrant its own section: You can’t necessarily advertise on any subreddit you want. Once you make your list of potential subreddits, you’ll need to ensure it has enough page views to be eligible for advertising.

To figure out whether a subreddit has enough page views, consider that one Reddit advertising campaign has a minimum spend of $5, and it costs $0.75 per thousand page views. Additionally, you can purchase up to three months out.

With those requirements, you’ll need roughly 6,700 page views over three months to achieve the $5 minimum spend.

To figure out how many page views you’re likely to receive on a subreddit, take a look at how many users are currently on the subreddit. For instance, you can see at 2 p.m. on a Monday that there are roughly 2,000 users on the r/marketing subreddit:

Dividing 6,700 by 90, you’ll note you need roughly 74 viewers per day on a subreddit to reach the minimum requirement — r/marketing, then, is way over the daily required page views, but there are other smaller subreddits with only 5-10 users per day, which could make it more difficult for you to reach the minimum spend. Plus, you want to choose subreddits that enable you to have the highest reach possible.

5. Set up your campaign.

Once you’ve chosen your subreddits, it’s now time to set up your campaign. In my account, I started by clicking on “Dashboard” in the top left of my screen, and then selected “Create Campaign.”

Next, you need to choose my campaign type.

6. Choose your campaign type.

Reddit gives you three options: simple create, advanced create, or import a campaign from another platform (Facebook ads, for example) — very useful, in my opinion!

For this section, you’ll need your ads creative: a video or photo, headlines, target URLs, etc. If you’ve run any ads before, like Google Ads, this interface should look very familiar. It’s similar.

After I completed the basics, I opened the toggles and narrowed down my targeting.

You’ll need to narrow down your audience — including interests, communities, and device type — your budget, and your bid (the maximum price you're willing to pay per 1,000 impressions). Additionally, you’ll need to figure out a schedule for your ad, including what time(s) of day you want it to appear and when you want your campaign to end.

As you can see from the above, I can select specific subreddits relevant to my audience that I want my ads to appear in. At the top, I can see estimates of impressions and clicks, giving me an idea of how much budget I need to run the ad successfully.

Here, you’ll create a new post or upload an existing advertisement that you might’ve designed for another platform. Feel free to take a look at Reddit’s internal advertising resources — including Reddit’s Advertising Help page — to learn best practices when designing an ad for Reddit.

Once you’re happy with the creative assets and billing details are complete, click “Publish.”

You’ll get an email once your ad is live.

7. Analyze your campaign performance to improve over time.

Once your campaign is up and running, I highly recommend tracking its performance. You can monitor within the Reddit advertising dashboard itself, as well as through third-party tools like Google Analytics. Additionally, ensure you’re taking the time to respond to any comments left on your ad.

As with any advertising campaign you run, you’ll want to use analytics on this campaign to iterate and improve for the next one.

Ultimately, I think it’s worth considering using Reddit as a platform for sharing content for the sake of helpfulness and audience engagement rather than as a cost-effective advertising strategy.

Inspired to try Reddit advertising?

I loved how intuitive the Reddit advertising dashboard is. I found the whole process very easy, and I’m not an ads specialist. The targeted communities make Reddit feel like a great place for advertising. As mentioned above, I strongly feel that Reddit will grow and audiences will diversify, providing spaces for blossoming communities.

If you’re new to advertising, don’t fret. Just start! You’ll figure it out, and HubSpot has guides to help you every step of the way.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.