Reddit Ads, Are They Worth It?
Adobe Photoshop's ad campaign on Reddit generated 300% more conversions and had a 110% higher click-through rate than its advertising efforts on other platforms.
Could your business achieve similar results by experimenting with Reddit ads? Should you launch a Reddit campaign?
Maybe.
There’s a lot to consider before allocating ad spend to Reddit.
It’s a much different platform than Instagram, Linkedin, Tiktok, and other social medias.
This article will break down the pros, cons, and nuances of advertising on Reddit to help you determine if your business could benefit from experimenting with a campaign on the platform.
We’ll cover
How Reddit is Different Than Other Social Media Platforms
General Advantages and Disadvantages of Reddit
Case Studies (Both Positive and Negative)
My Personal Experience With Reddit Ads
Note: averages for metrics such as cost per click vary based on industry competitiveness, quality of the creative, etc., the numbers you’ll see in this article (or others) could be significantly different from what you experience.
Reddit is Different Than Other Social Media Platforms
The first thing businesses need to understand before advertising on Reddit is that it’s not like other social media platforms.
Every social media platform has its own culture, but Reddit’s is particularly unique.
Unlike other platforms that prioritize image, status, and building a following, Reddit users place value on anonymity, honest discussions, and varied perspectives.
A Reddit user’s feed isn’t populated with posts from friends, family, and influencers. Instead, it consists of live, trending discussions from their favorite subreddits. Subreddits are communities within Reddit that focus on specific topics and allow users to engage in conversations with others who share their interests.
For example, the subreddit r/entrepreneur is a community for business owners to share successes, ask for feedback on strategies, discuss online tools, and talk about anything else related to entrepreneurship.
The two posts captured above provide insight into the type of content that does well on Reddit; r/entreprenuer is a subreddit for business owners and fittingly, both of these posts open up a conversation around topics that business owners would find interesting.
In contrast, posts from new business owners asking the community to visit their website, try their product, or anything of that nature, tend to do very poorly.
It’s ok to be self-centric on other social media platforms because the users who’ll see your content signed up to see it (by following your account). They’re interested in your business. On Reddit, the community signs up for discussion around a certain topic (e.g., entrepreneurship), if your post doesn’t contribute anything to that topic, it probably won’t do well.
General Advantages and Disadvantages of Reddit
Now that we’ve covered how Reddit is a completely different platform than other social media, let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of using it for advertising purposes.
Advantages:
Targeted Advertising: Reddit allows you to display ads to users based on the subreddits they engage with. This can be particularly helpful if you’re targeting a specific niche that may be hard to reach using other social media platforms.
For example, I’ve created campaigns for managed service providers (MSPs are outsourced IT essentially), and conveniently there’s a subreddit, r/MSP with 140,000 members I’m able to show ads to. For context, this is 10x more MSPs than I’m able to reach using LinkedIn.
Cost-effective: The average cost per click on Reddit is $3.50; though, depending on the competitiveness of the industry and the quality of the creative, this number can be significantly higher or lower.
Disadvantages:
User skepticism: Reddit users tend to be skeptical of advertising and may be more likely to downvote or ignore ads. This can make it challenging for advertisers to make an impact with their campaigns.
Negative Feedback: While every platform has its own set of trolls, haters, and critics, on Reddit, they can be especially vocal.
The last thing any advertiser wants is a series of negative comments underneath a post they’re paying to promote, and this is something to be cautious of. Fortunately, Reddit offers two solutions to protect against this. Brands can
Disable comments under their ads
Report and delete unreasonably critical comments under the ads
Summarizing the pros and cons above, Reddit provides a low-cost opportunity for brands to engage with niche customers but creating advertising campaigns on Reddit requires strategy and caution to avoid upsetting its users.
Case Studies (Both Positive and Negative)
We’ll look at both ends of the spectrum below through a series of case studies.
Case #1: Adobe Photoshop
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, Adobe experienced great success with its Reddit campaign.
One of the primary drivers of Adobe’s success was its emphasis on the creative.
Adobe did not copy its ads from other platforms and toss them up on Reddit.
Instead, it collaborated with Reddit Karma-Lab (Reddit’s creative strategy agency) to design advertisements that would resonate with Adobe users on the platform.
This led to the ads coming across as authentic. They made references to things only those with a deep Reddit history would understand, they embraced the culture found on Adobe subreddits, and they were met with an overwhelmingly positive response.
Adobe was able to achieve
A 3x higher conversion rate compared to other top-performing platforms.
A 110% higher ctr for front page takeovers using Reddit creative compared to standard creative
14% lower CPC using Reddit creative compared to standard creative
More details on Adobe’s Reddit campaign.
Case #2: Ladder
Ladder is a growth agency that attempted Reddit ads back in 2021. In total, it spent only $250 on two campaigns, one campaign for $50 and another for $200.
In the $50 campaign, Ladder tested many different types of creative.
This was its most popular advertisement,
“Agencies that are active on Dribbble typically see 10-14 qualified leads per month from that channel. Find out how we can help you grow your Dribbble account.”
And this was its least popular advertisement,
“Only 8 spots left – we work with some of the top digital agencies in the world to grow their leads. Will you be left behind?”
The results make sense given that the second ad, feels like an ad. It plays on our natural tendency to fear missing out and Reddit users can sniff the marketing tactics from a mile away. The first ad also provides some value, i.e., click here and you’ll learn how you can use Dribble to grow your agency.
Interestingly though, neither advertisement generated a single lead. The campaign generated 900 clicks (CPC < 6 cents). Yet, none of the clicks resulted in anything.
Intrigued by the results, Ladder ran a follow-up experiment, this time, with $200. The company took a different approach, and instead of sending users to its homepage, it sent them to specific blog articles. It tested over 27 different pieces of creative, all using different writing styles and tactics.
Here are the results of the experiment:
39 page views on the Ladder.io homepage.
141 page views on the different blog posts
30 sessions on referral
a handful of Ladder newsletter signups
0 leads
More details on Ladder’s Reddit campaign
For $250, these results are underwhelming.
The case echoes the experiences others who’ve run ads have shared with me — Reddit can be great for clicks, but the clicks don’t convert into leads or sales.
Some marketers have speculated that this is because a bulk of the clicks they’re seeing are coming from bots. This is possible, as all social media platforms experience some bot activity, but the next case proves that even if total clicks are diluted from bots, well-executed Reddit ads can effectively generate leads for businesses.
Case #3: Caliber Fitness
This third case is an ad I stumbled across while surfing Reddit. I do not have exact details on its performance in terms of sign ups, CPC, or ROI, but as you’ll see below, the ad was clearly very successful.
Here’s the ad (sorry in advance for its length).
As you can see, the ad received 17,100 upvotes (for anyone unfamiliar with Reddit, this is a lot). It also received nearly 6,000 comments.
And here’s what a few of the top comments have to say..
The top comment (with 2,400 upvotes) states that the transparency shown in the ad is appreciated and they’re going to try the product.
Unlike many other ads, the comment section in this post is littered with positive feedback.
It demonstrates that Reddit users don’t hate advertisements, they just have a problem with the style of some of the ads they come across, e.g., exaggerated claims, minimal information, masquerading as organic posts, etc.
This is a case you’ll want to come back to and study closer if you’re considering experimenting with a campaign.
My Personal Experience With Reddit Ads
After reviewing those three case studies, I want to conclude by chiming in with my own experience running Reddit Ads.
I’ve experienced mixed results.
In all of the campaigns I’ve run, I’ve included 5-7 different pieces of creative. Typically, one or two pieces will generate all of the clicks and the remaining pieces of creative will stop serving.
The top-performing creative has averaged a cost per click between $0.30 - $0.65.
I’ve always left comments enabled, and engagement levels have varied across ads. The highest engagement I’ve seen was on an advertisement that had an image of a surprised cat and a caption announcing a shockingly low price. Some commentators inquired about the pricing structure, others criticized the ad, and some even criticized the product — though we did have some users jump in under critical comments about the product and start defending it. This was great.
As far as conversions, I’ve seen very few reported by the Reddit pixel tracker. However, the Shopify analytics show a massive uptick in sales from Reddit traffic right around the time we started running ads.
While I can’t accurately quantify the ROI of the campaign, I’d consider it a success.
Should your business experiment with Reddit ads?
So, should your business experiment with Reddit ads?
I’d say it’s worth a try. The last thing to consider though is context.
If you’re running successful campaigns on Linkedin or Instagram, taking dollars away from those platforms may not make sense, the opportunity cost is high.
On the other hand, if Instagram is saturated with ads for products in your market, and you’re having trouble cutting through the noise — the ad budget isn’t going to good use anyway, and moving over to Reddit and targeting communities in your niche could turn out to be a great investment.
My website isn’t Reddit, here are my shameless plugs
If your business is looking for help running a Reddit Ads campaign, let’s get in touch!
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Check out my last article, Reddit for Content Marketing, Why (and how) You Should Use It to learn how to track user movement throughout your buyer’s journey, I.e., where are users dropping off when going through your site?
Leave a comment below with your thoughts on Reddit ads, I’d love to hear about your experiences/learnings/opinions.
