How to promote business in the USA. Reddit advertising account review

What is Reddit

Reddit is a popular social platform in the US and Western Europe that combines the functions of a forum, a social network, and public media. On this portal, any user can create their own community of interests, a sub-reddit, where they can publish original content or discuss third-party materials from the Internet. Reddit cannot be called a professionally oriented social network, like Linkedin or Xing. It is rather a collection of interest groups. In the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, the Pikabu platform operates on similar principles.

Reddit statistics

Reddit is one of the most promising portals for promotion in the US, given its scale and reach. The platform ranks tenth in the ranking of global online services at the beginning of 2024, next to Wikipedia (9th place) and Discord (11th place).

• 208 million pages in Google's index
• 70 million visitors per day
• 433 million views per day
• 128 million keywords in organic traffic
• Over 20 million backlinks.

By the way, the huge number of backlinks makes Reddit one of the most authoritative domains in the world. In the first quarter of 2024, the authority rating was 92 out of 100. The higher the authority, the higher the visibility of pages in search engines.

Reddit audience

The US audience is 48% of all portal users. At least once a month, a third of all Americans, about 100 million people, visit the platform. About 7% each come from the UK and Canada, 4.5% from Australia, 3% from Germany.

Reddit's age audience:

• 18-24 years old – 33%;
• 24-35 years old – 33.5%;
• 35-44 years old – 16%.

From a business point of view, the most attractive audience is the 24-44 age group. These are the people who actively earn and invest. That is, almost 50% of the portal users can be considered as a potential audience for targeting.

• 80% of platform users indicate that they have higher education in their profile.
• 8% indicated that they use Reddit for professional communication.
• 17% of users use the portal to follow the content of certain companies and brands.
• The average user income is approximately $6,200 per month.

In other words, it is possible and necessary to work with advertising on Reddit in the USA. The targeting capabilities of the advertising account are relatively small, if compared, for example, with Meta (Facebook)*, but the service is constantly evolving, new opportunities and options appear.

Setting up a Reddit ADS campaign

The first thing Reddit offers us after clicking on the “Create campaign” button is a menu where you can choose a simple creation path “in literally three steps” or an option with advanced settings. The division into simple and advanced methods is traditional for both Western social networks and those focused on the CIS countries.

Easy way of creation

The first step is to create a creative. The simplified template offers to add one photo or video and create a title no longer than 300 characters. The text has a funny feature - there is no way to break it into paragraphs. A text of 300 characters can hardly be called a canvas, so the nuance is not critical. It is possible to specify a link for an advertising redirect and choose one of the proposed call to action options. You can disable comments with a checkmark if you do not want to moderate them later.

The second step is to select an audience for retargeting. You can launch ads by region (country, state, etc.) or specify social groups by interest. Both methods are available at once, meaning you can combine them. Next, specify the daily budget. The minimum amount is $5. A pop-up hint warns that the actual amount may be 20% higher. Depending on the daily budget and region, the menu on the right side of the page generates approximate audience reach and probable clicks. Of course, these figures are just a guide and are not a guarantee. It is possible to set the start and end dates of the advertising campaign.

The third step is to specify the payment method. There is only a form for linking a credit card. Reddit offers other payment methods only for some countries.

It should be noted right away that the advanced version of creating an advertising campaign has many more settings. If you are seriously working with advertising budgets, it is better to first study the advanced settings menu.

Advanced way of creation

The advanced settings menu is divided into three parts. The first is creating the name and goals of the campaign, the second is setting up impressions by groups, and the third is specifying payment details.

Name and objectives of the advertising campaign

The first step is to indicate the name of the advertising campaign (up to 200 characters) and put a check mark if the advertisement relates to real estate, HR recruitment or finance.

Step two – choose a campaign goal. Depending on the goal you choose, Reddit will set the optimization model and the payment model.

There are 6 targets available at the beginning of 2024:

1. Brand awareness and audience reach. Optimizes the advertising campaign with a focus on a wide audience for display. The CPM model is the cost per 1000 impressions.
2. Increasing traffic to the target site. Here Reddit promises to select an audience that is likely to click on the ad. The CPC model is pay per click.
3. Conversion optimization. The advertising account will display information about the target actions of visitors to the site (orders, purchases, etc.). Additionally, Reddit offers to install the Reddit Pixel tool on the target site to track conversion. The CPC model is pay per click.
4. Optimization for video views. The CPV model is pay per view of the video.
5. Downloading and installing the application. The account will allow you to track how often users have installed the application you offered. The CPC model is pay per click. When choosing this objective, you can specify the URL of the application in the App Store or Google Play to link its ID to the ad group.
6. Catalog promotion. The ability to add products to the catalog menu and track the purchase or order of products. In the second quarter of 2024, this objective was still in beta testing. CPC model - cost per click.

In order to track conversion, you will have to install Reddit Pixel on your site anyway. To do this, in the third menu item, find and click the "Install Reddit Pixel" button.

Next, a step-by-step menu for setting up and installing the tool will appear. The menu is easy to navigate and provides detailed instructions on how to set conversion rates.

There are eight standard conversion types:

1. User makes a purchase – 5 data types: item count, price, currency, transaction ID, items.
2. Add to cart – 4 data types: item count, price, currency, items.
3. Add to wishlist – 4 data types: item count, price, currency, items.
4. Lead generation – 4 data types: price, currency, transaction ID, items.
5. Subscription – 4 data types: price, currency, transaction ID, items.
6. Page visit – 1 data type: items.
7. Viewing target content, such as a product page – 1 data type: items.
8. User performing a search – 1 data type: items

It is also possible to customize the conversion by the user. In the "custom" menu, you can receive 6 types of data and configure up to 20 custom events.

This means that there are only 8 standard conversion types and 20 custom events. This is more than, for example, Meta (Facebook)*, where you can track 8 target actions, but less than Yandex LLC with its two hundred actions. Considering that Reddit is a social network, the functionality is quite decent.

Step three - specify the payment method. Reddit offers different payment methods depending on the region that we specified during registration. Here are some:

1. Credit Card: The only payment method available in all regions.
2. PayPal: Payment via PayPal.
3. Bank Transfer: This method is usually used for large amounts and only in certain countries.
4. Check or Money Order: In some cases, Reddit may accept checks or money orders. However, this may take longer due to processing time.

It is possible to limit the maximum budget for the entire period of the advertising campaign. Reddit will not spend more than the specified amount on advertising.

Setting up groups

In the group settings, you can set different targeting options: specific subreddits, communities, interest groups, specify geolocation or even the type of devices on which the ad will appear.

The first step is to create a group. Here you just need to specify a name so that you can save the settings later. There can be many groups. It all depends on who, when and how you want to show ads.

The "Automatic ad creation" option allows you to create random creatives from blocks of already created advertising campaigns. How does it work? For example, we create 5 campaigns using the same "Headline + image" template. We use different headlines and different illustrations in each, and we check the "Automatic creation" box in each. Reddit will take blocks from these five templates and combine them randomly for display. In theory, this way you can determine by trial and error which option will show the best result.

The "Automatic ad creation" option allows you to test how headlines and advertising creatives work on large coverage. It is better to turn it off if you need to test a campaign on a narrow social circle or an audience of specific groups.

The second step is to determine the audiences to display.

The setup menu is divided into several parts:

1. Selecting impressions for specific communities or interest groups. Here you can simply specify keywords (up to 500) by which Reddit will search for an audience for the display.
2. Custom audience settings. Here we do not select Reddit groups and communities, but create a narrower target: for a list of specific users, for those who have already visited your website, were interested in or saw an advertisement, clicked on your advertisements.

For example, when choosing the goal "Video views", you can select those users who have previously watched your videos. More precise settings allow you to additionally set one of three values: "any viewing time", "more than 50% of the video", "100%".

The custom audience settings menu is very convenient: you can enable and disable specific user groups, upload lists as text or an attached file.

1. Selecting a geolocation. Enable or disable specific countries. For the USA, you can specify a specific state or city.
   
   Unfortunately, there is no way to define the coverage area on the map with "pins", as it used to be, for example, in Meta (Facebook)*. We define gender characteristics. By gender, the division is quite simple: show to everyone, men or women. This should surprise that part of the audience that believes that there are more than two genders.
2. Select devices. Here we determine on which platforms we want to display our ads: Desktop or mobile iOS and Android.
   

What's interesting is that for each option you can additionally select the operating system version and even the mobile operator in three countries: the USA, the UK, and Canada. When choosing the "Download and install the application" goal, you can specify not only the platform and operating system version, but also specific models of mobile devices.

Whenever you select a specific group of people, audience, or retargeting method, the weekly/daily impressions coverage indicators and the approximate forecast of attention and clicks change on the right side of the page. These figures are, of course, not guaranteed. This is how Reddit gives an approximate estimate of the coverage and effectiveness of the campaign you are setting up, taking into account the budget you have set.

Selecting an advertising location

The first step is to determine in which part of the page we want the ad to be displayed.

There are only two options: Feed and Conversations.

1. Feed – show ads to users who view the home page, popular channels or channels of individual communities.
2. Conversations – show ads between the publication and the first comment in the topic.

Each option has its own features. For example, headers for the Feed field can hold up to 250 characters, and for the Conversations field – up to 300. On mobile devices, headers should be created with a length of no more than 100 characters. The recommended image size in both cases is 400x300 pixels. You can read more about the technical requirements by clicking on the question icon next to the Placements menu.

The second step is brand safety settings. Here you can specify communities and interest groups in which we do not want to show our ads. There is an option to exclude by keywords.

Setting up a budget

In this menu, we select the budget type and the amount we want to spend. You can specify a daily budget or a limit for the entire campaign. Here we also determine the bid – the maximum price we are willing to pay for 1000 impressions, a click or a video view.

The following figures are relevant for Reddit:

• Minimum budget per day – $5;
• Minimum budget for the entire campaign – $155.

Minimum bid:

• CPM – $3.5;
• CPC – $0.1;
• CPV – $0.01.

It turns out that the minimum weekly budget for testing 1 creative is $35. Practical experience says that to really test the hypothesis, you need to get at least 1000 clicks on the best creatives. To select the best ones, you need to launch at least 10 pieces per week. So only for the initial selection you will need 35x10 = $350 per week. Or $1400 per month, if you continue testing for a month on different creatives (change 10 creatives every week).

Campaign schedule

The schedule is quite simple: we define the start and end dates of the campaign using the calendar. If desired, you can select specific hours of display for each day of the week. To proceed directly to creating an ad, you need to click the "Continue" button again on the right at the bottom of the screen.

Creation of creative

The advanced creative creation option offers more settings and templates compared to the simplified one. The simplified preview can be seen on the right side of the screen. It changes according to the selected template and the specified creative settings.

The first step is to specify a name for the new ad. The ad name is used for reports and is not shown to users.

The second step is to create a creative. You can select an already created and saved post or prepare a new one. There are 4 ready-made templates available for the new creative:

1. Image – a template where the main part of the creative is a photograph or illustration. The photo can be made clickable with a redirect to the target web page or service.
2. Video – creative with video integration. It is possible to add GIF videos. It is also possible to set up a redirect to the target page or service.
3. Carousel – an option with the ability to add several photographs or illustrations.
4. Text – a form for articles and reviews. The maximum number of characters with spaces is 40,000. Enough, among other things, for publishing longreads.

For all options, the option to enable or disable comments is available.

Step three – add a link to the tracker and the tracking option “per view” or “per click”.

Pros and cons of Reddit ads account

Reddit's advertising platform can't yet keep up with the functionality of Meta (Facebook)*, for example. Its pros and cons for marketing in the US only become apparent when compared to competitors.

The most obvious cons:

• No language targeting. For a resource that is visited daily by more than 50 million users, this is, at the very least, strange.
• There is no way to set up audience targeting based on professional principles. You can select subreddits, interest groups, and even devices for display, but you won't be able to target professions or, for example, specific companies and corporations.
• Geotargeting is only for any country, in the US - for a state or city. You won't be able to target advertising by geo to a coverage area on a map. That is, you can’t use “pins” to define a city district or some other area on the map for targeting, as was previously the case, for example, in Meta (Facebook)*.
• In Reddit, you can start a private chat with any user and create group chats, but there is no tool yet in the advertising account that would automatically collect an audience from users with whom you have corresponded. There is a limit on the number of messages you can send. It depends on factors such as your account status (for example, a new user or an experienced participant), your behavior on the platform, and other factors that Reddit can use to determine your activity.
• Reddit does not provide built-in functionality for creating lead forms or landing pages, as is the case, for example, in the Meta (Facebook)* social network.

In general, to effectively set up an advertising campaign on Reddit, you need to spend time finding suitable topics and subreddits for advertising. For example, to promote a team of developers, targeting interest groups alone will not be enough. If you specify an interest group Business and target the USA, you will get an audience of approximately 46-57 million.

In any case, it is necessary to focus the goal on a narrower audience, but there are few convenient tools for this. In any case, you will have to sit and sort through different options with your hands.

What are the advantages?

• Reddit is a good advertising platform for those who plan to promote their business in the USA. The advantages are large coverage in America and the ability to geo-target a specific city in the States.
• 8 standard conversion types and 20 custom ones in Reddit versus 8 target actions in Meta (Facebook)*.
• Initial testing of advertising creatives will cost about $1,400 per month. If you plan to promote in the USA, this is rather a plus. The same tests in Linkedin will cost twice as much. For European countries, it is probably better to try promotion on other platforms.

Important information for those who are taking their company to other markets

• We run a channel in Telegram, where we share our team’s experience and publish cases on entering foreign markets.
• A guide with an overview of PR platforms in the CIS for promoting business in the IT segment can be downloaded for freehere.
• Our paid guide to foreign marketing is available at this link.

* Meta company recognized as extremist in Russia