Reddit offers a user base in which the users have already declared their interests and are highly engaged. That’s why Reddit becomes an imminent platform to target users for campaigns which are announcement kind of campaigns such as donations, scholarships, new product launch etc. Reddit holds the capability to shoot up your campaign engagement very high with the defined audience base.
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1. Setting up Reddit Campaign
Follow the steps below to set up a Reddit campaign. If you have not already set up the Reddit pixel and standard conversion codes, here is an article on how to set up Reddit conversion using GTM.
- Login to your Reddit campaign manager Dashboard.
- From the Dashboard drop-down menu, select Create Campaign
- Clicking on the above button will open up a new campaign creation steps.
- Reddit five types of campaign objectives
- Brand awareness and Reach
- Traffic
- Conversions
- Video views and,
- App installs
- Select your campaign objective and click on continue
2. Reddit Ad Targeting (Ad Group Set up)
- Clicking on continue in the previous step will land you to the Ad Group creation process
- Just like Facebook AdSets, you need to define your audience on Reddit
- After naming your AdGroup, the first thing that you define is the targeting locations and then Audience.
- You have even options to exclude certain locations
2. 1 Defining Reddit Ads Audience
There are basically two types of audience targeting that you can do using Reddit.
- Interest-based targeting and,
- Targeting specific communities
I would not recommend using interest-based targeting and communities targeting at the same time. It shrinks the audience just like AND operator from the LinkedIn audience. Each interest is further divided by sub-interests as you can see in the picture.
Targeting specific communities on Reddit
Community targeting is defined through Sub-Reddits on Reddit. You cannot target all the Sub-Reddits that you usually see while browsing this social media site. Only selected Sub-Reddits are available for targeting. You can also exclude some subreddits.
Once you start typing in the subreddit boxes, the platform will automatically suggest relevant subreddits based on what you type. Based on the suggested subreddits, you can choose multiple subreddits that you want to target. Here is a screenshot of the subreddits auto suggestions for the pet industry.
- Rest of the AdGroup settings are very intuitive. Those are:-
- Time of the Day
- Budget
- Bid and,
- Schedule
- Just like Quora, Reddit is also a fairly cheaper platform. If you are used to Google or Bing ads, try to put your Bids much lower on this platform.
3. Set up Reddit Ads
Reddit Ads are fairly easier to Setup with just a few fields needed. Here is a screenshot of how a fresh Ad looks like on Reddit.
There are two kinds of Reddit ads. Creation interface and Ad fields of these two different Ads are almost similar.
- Link Post ads and,
- Video Post ads
3.1 Reddit Link Post Ads
At the screenshot above, you can already see a sample Link post ad preview at the bottom. You just need to fill in the following details
- Post headline (Limit 300 characters)
- Destination URL
- Display URL and,
- Call to Action
3.1 Reddit Video Post Ads
Video Post ads are similar to Post link ads with an extra option to upload the videos.
Before or after upload the video for the ad, you just again need to fill in the following details (You can also allow comments on an Ad Post by checking the option above)
- Post headline (Limit 300 characters)
- Destination URL
- Display URL and,
- Call to Action
3.2 Reddit Ads Formats: Specs & Dimensions
Assets required:
- Headline: 300 Character max
- Thumbnail Image: 400×300 pixels (JPG, PNG; 500KB Max File Size, Aspect Ratio of 4×3)
- Card Image: 1200×628 pixels (JPG, PNG; 1MB Max File Size, Aspect Ratio of 1.91×1)
- Click through URL: Must be HTTPS if link post
Additional Video assets:
- Native Post (autoplay): 1200×628 video (.MOV (ProRes NOT accepted), .MP4, 1GB Max File Size, Aspect ratio of 1.91×1)
- Third Party Video Post (click to play): video link (note: for the mobile post, the third-party video must be promoted from profile)
4. Reddit Ads Placement Examples
Just like other social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, you do not get to choose your ad placement on Reddit. There are two locations where your ad will appear. Those locations are shown below as an example for desktop as well as mobile. If you remember the thumbnail-sized image requirement of size 400×300 px from the ad settings, that thumbnail is used for the mobile devices.
Once you are done setting up the ad, you can make your campaign live or even draft it. By giving a future campaign start date in the campaign setting, you will automatically schedule the campaign.
5. Reddit Campaign performance
I have basically run two kinds of campaigns on Reddit with different campaign objectives. Those campaigns were:
- Brand awareness and,
- Conversion based campaigns
Reddit campaign performance
Reddit CPM:
Looking at the figure of eCPM and number of impressions delivered by Reddit to a link post ad, I was surprised. Reddit offers a way cheaper CPM than any other social media advertising platform. That’s why I would recommend Reddit for announcement kind of campaigns. I cannot say if that is inflated data or how Reddit counts an ad impression but to me, it looks a great platform for cheaper CPM.
Reddit CPA
Conversions campaign did not perform well on Reddit. You can see that the CPA was way high. I must also confess that in 2018, Reddit always had an issue with conversion tracking and that’s why they introduced new Reddit pixels and conversion codes for better tracking. Still, the conversion is way costlier.
Reddit CPC & CTR
Looking at the above screenshot again, you can clearly see that the CPC on Reddit is really low between CAD $0.1 – CAD $ 0.25 and CTR is between 0.15% to 0.20%. Looking at the CPC, Reddit sounds a promising platform for driving crazy traffic to a landing page. However, when I looked at some of the page engagement matrices such as Avg. session duration, pages/ session or bounce rate, Reddit traffic quality was the cheapest, but cheapest.
Bounce rate for over thousands of visitors was more than 90% with average session duration of around 6 seconds and pages per session being around 1. I am sure even if you want to drive traffic and later remarket them, it won’t work.
5.1 Reddit Campaign Performance breakdown
You might have already guessed that Reddit provides campaign performance breakdown based on the same parameters as those defined at the Adgroup level. These breakdown options are:
- Date
- Country
- Subreddits and,
- Interest
I hope this Reddit campaign guide was helpful to you.