Getting started with digital advertising on Reddit can be intimidating — although less so if you’ve got digital ad experience on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn or Google. In this post, we’ll give you five simple steps (plus some valuable pro tips) to help you learn how to advertise on Reddit.
(If you want to know more about Reddit’s appeal and advertising potential, check out this post, where we attempt to demystify the beloved/demonized platform.)
The core concepts for how to advertise on Reddit follow many other ad platforms in the form of campaigns, ad groups, and ads. Here is a quick 5-step process to get started right away.
Step 1: Create an Account
Go to ads.reddit.com and simply follow the prompts to create your business Reddit account. If you’re already signed into a personal Reddit account, click the Log Out button at the bottom of the page to create a new business account. Your Reddit ads dashboard should start empty like the example below.
Click on the “+Create Campaign” Button at the top to start.
Step 2: Start Building a Campaign
Name your new campaign and select how you’ll pay for your ads. From here, you’ll have to choose an objective based on what you’re hoping to achieve with your campaign. Reddit currently offers five different objective options.
| What it does | What it does | |
| Brand Awareness | Lets viewers know about your product or company | CPM (cost per thousand impressions) |
| Traffic | Drives visitors to your business website | Cost per click |
| Conversions | Drives conversions (clicks, signups, etc.) on your site | Cost per click |
| Video Views | Increases views of your organization’s video | Cost per view |
| App Installations | Drives viewers to download and install your app | Cost per click |
Bonus Tip: Reddit Pixel
Pixels are small snippets of HTML code that gather information on visitors and their behaviours on your website. This information provides insight into whether the ads you are running simply lead to people visiting your page, or actually drive conversion to sales or subscriptions!
The Reddit Pixel option in the left column option, will allow you to track performance of your ads once they are live. Copy and paste your pixel here, or opt for the Google Tag Manager if you do not have a custom one.
Step 3: Define Your Audience
Start by naming the group you’d like to target with this campaign and then define your audience.
By default, Reddit will apply the “Allow Reddit to expand your targeting to maximize your results” option which expands the audience to include users with similar communities and interests. If this is your first ad on Reddit, we suggest having this option turned off as it can quickly drain the budget by showing ads to a larger than intended audience. If you see that you are not hitting enough traffic, you can always turn this on later.
Proceed to add target locations. If you don’t specify target locations, your ad will show worldwide, which is not optimal for most advertisers. (For example, a marketing agency only servicing Canadian companies showing their ads to the US will run the budget dry and may result in inquiries from clients the agency cannot serve.)
After defining a geographic audience for your ads, you’ll move on to interest targeting — a key aspect in understanding how to advertise on Reddit.
Reddit’s interest targeting will show your ad to any user who has recently interacted with specific categories you select. This is good when targeting a broad audience, but can also miss your actual target audience:
For this reason, we instead suggest you target by “Communities”, or subreddit targeting. As described in our previous blog post, this is what makes Reddit a great tool for interest targeting. Your Reddit advertising will show up only to the specific subreddits you have chosen, and whose interest matches your product or service. Type keywords into the communities field and select the subreddits that fit your target audience.
Finish up by selecting:
- Targeted devices (desktop or mobile)
- Ad placement (news feed or conversations)
- Budget (your maximum daily spend and how much you’ll pay per impression/view/click)
- Schedule (If you want your ads to run indefinitely or between specific dates)
- Time of day (optionally, you can choose what time of day your ads should appear)
Step 4: Upload your Advertisement Assets
After naming your ad and including a tracker (optional), click “Create New Post”.
Upload your assets in the form of text, picture, and or video.
Reddit has the following requirements and limitations:
- Post Title: 300 characters maximum. This is the Reddit advertisement headline your audience sees. (Titles longer than 100 characters may be truncated on mobile devices with smaller screens.)
- Image Size: 3MB max for Card Images (shown on platforms that support card view) and 500kB max for Thumbnail Image (shown for desktop and compact view on mobile).
- Image Format: 1200x628px recommended for Card Images, 400x300px recommended for Thumbnail Image.
- Video: MP4 or MOV, 1GB max file size. 5 ~ 30 sec recommended duration. Multiple dimensions and 30fps max.
Banners:
- Knowing how to design your banners is just as important as knowing how to advertise on Reddit. Reddit advertisements that have a coloured —rather than monochrome — background are more eye-catching.
- A white ad placed on the default theme, or black ad in dark-mode both do not stand out from other posts.
- Too much text on a banner makes it less likely to be read, while too little will leave viewers confused or unclear what you’re offering.
- Avoid text on thumbnails, as these smaller icons are hard to see on both desktop and mobile. The best practice here is to have a single easy-to-see image or your company logo.
- Images should also look to be relevant to your product or services. Below are some examples of Reddit advertising shown today and what makes them good or not:
Bad Example:
Gray background does not help make the ad image “pop” when scrolling through a feed.
Bad Example:
Too much text on top of an already long headline can overwhelm users.
Bad Example:
Good colour scheme, but most people will not understand the relevance of this image.
Good Example:
Good colours, right amount of meaningful text, and has the logo for users to remember you by.
Calls To Action (CTAs)
Make sure your CTA (call to action) aligns with the advertisement campaign you’ve selected. For example, if your campaign objective was “App Installs”, you would likely want to select the “Download” or “Install” CTA. Full list of CTA for Reddit advertising are as follows:
- Download
- Learn More
- Apply Now
- Install
- Contact Us
- Watch Now
- Shop Now
- Get Showtimes
- Play Now
- View More
- Sign Up
- See Menu
Comments
At the bottom of the asset window is a box which gives you the option to “Allow comments on Reddit post”. It is important to note that Reddit will not allow you to delete any comments that other users have made towards your ad.
Save the post and preview the ad in both desktop and mobile forms before submitting it for review.
Step 5: Go Live!
Congratulations on creating your first Reddit advertisement! Now you know how to advertise on Reddit. Reddit will typically verify your ad in 2 to 5 hours before it goes live.
Once the ad is live, it will be “ON” by default and will start spending your budget. Returning to your dashboard will show your impressions, clicks, CPC, and other general information regarding that campaign.
In the meantime, you can work on different versions of your creative assets to prevent ad fatigue. It will also help to A/B test these different versions to see which set can generate more clicks and impressions.
We Know How to Advertise on Reddit
Still not sure how to advertise on Reddit effectively? It can be daunting. At Total Product Marketing, our ad experts can help you design, build and launch advertising campaigns on Reddit that will help achieve your business goals. Contact us today to learn more.
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