Reddit Ads 101: A Quick Way to Increase Landing Page Traffic

Reddit — the self-proclaimed “Front Page of the Internet” — is the most engaged and most influential community online with countless viral topics being discussed among thousands of diverse communities.

The easiest way to demonstrate how successful Reddit has become since launching in 2005, is to highlight the following stats:

• Reddit contains 234 million unique members.
• It is the 7th largest website in the U.S.
• It receives 8 billion page views per month.
• The average visitor spends over 13 minutes at a time on the platform.
• In four years, the network expanded from about 40 million visitors to over 243 million visitors:

So what’s the reason for Reddit growing into such an expansive and diverse community? Primarily because of the freedom that the forum encourages its users.

Reddit allows its users to be themselves — or, somebody completely different — whichever they prefer. Reddit’s Founder, Alexis Ohanian, explains:

Reddit offers the opportunity for us, as humans, to connect on a much deeper, broader level because users have an alter ego and aren't tied to a social network of friends with whom they want to share how perfect their lives are.

Despite its vast, diversified community base, other online advertising methods such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads continue to dominate the market, leaving Reddit in their wake.

Despite this, many businesses continue to use this less popular advertising platform for reaching their audience with Reddit ads.

What are Reddit ads?

Reddit ads are commonly referred to as Promoted Posts and closely resemble regular user-submitted posts on Reddit. The main difference with ads and regular posts is that ads have a light blue background and have a “Promoted” label mark. Promoted Posts are located at the top of each listing page, and are rotated among other Promoted Posts.

Why choose Reddit for advertising?

Reddit is a cohesive community in a way that other major social platforms are not. While many users on other social sites are highly concerned with themselves and their own presence; Reddit users are focused on what is going on in the world and within the Reddit community, and are remarkably interactive.

The community is an incredibly diversified user base, and since the platform allows you to select your target audience from the entire network, it’s very possible for your business to flourish. Because of this, Reddit can be exceedingly effective at driving traffic, even more so than Facebook, Twitter, and many other social networks.

As Cofounder of Kindwave, Chris Moschella, states:

It would be impossible to get the level of interaction and feedback that we got on Reddit from any other ad platform.

How to do Reddit advertising

Reddit offers two primary advertising options, depending on your budget: Managed advertising and Self Serve advertising. Each option provides a different level of functionality and brand exposure.

Managed advertising

Managed advertising is the better choice for large-scale advertisers with a budget of at least a $30k quarterly spend. This option includes customized ad programs (like banner ads); detailed traffic reports; campaign planning, setup, and tracking; the option to purchase mobile ads; and a dedicated account manager.

Self Serve advertising

The Self Serve method is more commonly used because users can create ads with a budget starting at only $5. The Self Serve option allows users to create Promoted Posts with access to basic traffic analytics.

Self Serve ads include link ads and text ads:

Link ads are great for driving traffic to your website or a Reddit post-click landing page, as they include an external link. These ads don’t require much copywriting — just a strong headline with a convincing offer in 300 characters or less, as shown here:

Text ads are better for driving conversation and engagement with Reddit users, as they typically receive three times as many comments than link ads. While link ads drive prospects to one single click-through URL (like your post-click landing page), text ads simply click through to your detailed post with comments. Within your post copy, you may then include as many external links as you’d like.

Here is a text ad example from the movie Life and the internal Reddit page that it leads to:

It’s important to note that Reddit users can comment, upvote, and downvote your ads. The goal here is to receive more upvotes than downvotes for your ad’s visibility to increase. Knowing this, it’s critical that your ad copy — and your responses to comments. Speak to your audience in a friendly, conversational, and engaging way.

How are brands using Reddit ads to drive post-click landing page traffic?

As more and more businesses experiment with Reddit marketing. They are finding that the platform can drive brand awareness and post-click landing page traffic.

Kate Gardiner, Director of Social Media & Audience Engagement at Newsweek explains her success advertising on Reddit:

We're looking forward to continuing our experiment with Reddit advertising -- In less than a month we're seeing better responses, statistics, and engagement from the Reddit community. We're looking forward to making more of an investment going forward.

Let’s take a look at how other brands are using Reddit marketing to build and expand their businesses.

1. Vizury

Vizury ran a Self Serve link ad campaign to promote its Engage Commerce platform:

Although the Promoted Post headline is clearly salesy, it uses compelling copy to persuade Reddit users to click-through to the post-click landing page:

Also notice that the brand uses message matching — from ad to post-click landing page — to help reassure prospects they’re in the right place for the offer and to keep them engaged on the page — hopefully starting a free trial.

2. Hostelworld

This Self Serve link ad from Hostelworld is meant to drive traffic to their post-click landing page, promoting their “My Awesome Escape” vacation contest campaign:

The campaign’s goal was to increase their number of contest entries and grow brand awareness among U.S. and U.K. millennials. Manit Dosanjh, Content Marketing at Hostelworld, sums it up best:

“We’ve been able to reach a new and engaged audience via Reddit. We’re thrilled with the performance of our ads.” — Manita Dosanjh, Content Marketing, Hostelworld

By launching ads that targeted these users and related Reddit communities; Hostelworld saw tremendous growth over the six-week campaign. This included converting 23% of their post-click landing page traffic into contest entries and substantially boosting their mailing list subscriptions.

3. CallRail

This Self Serve link ad from CallRail promotes its free 14-day trial offer:

When prospects click the ad, they go to this post-click landing page where the offer is explained in further detail where they can sign up for the free trial:

4. ACLU

The ACLU designed this banner ad under Reddit’s Managed Ad program to promote their “People Power” campaign. Notice how the ad is much larger and eye-catching than the Self Serve ads above, making it more likely that Reddit users will click through. Also, note the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons in the top corner of the ad for users to upvote and downvote:

When prospects click the ad, this post-click landing page allows them to sign up to find a People Power Action Event in their area:

How to create Self Serve Reddit ads

Setting up Self Serve ad campaigns on Reddit is quite easy. In this section, we will give you a brief step-by-step walk-through. For more details on the process, you can visit Reddit’s Help Center.

Log in to your Reddit account, and at the bottom of any Reddit page, click the “Advertise” link.

Click the “Create an ad” button, to go to the Reddit advertising platform where you will be prompted to create your ad.

On this first page, upload your thumbnail image, create a compelling title for your promotion. Choose which type of post you’d like to create (link or text), and enter the URL for your ad:

Once you’ve created your basic promotion, you can “edit promotion” page, and see a preview of your ad. At this point, the “campaign dashboard” shows you can select your target audience, platform, budget, and scheduling details:

After you select all your ad details, click the orange “+close” button, and your campaign will be added to your dashboard.

Before your ad runs, you’ll need to submit your payment, using the payment form shown here:

Finally, Reddit will approve your ad before it runs. (Note: It will automatically enter the approval queue upon payment submission, so there is nothing for you to do here except wait.) Approval or denial usually takes one business day, and you get a refund on your payment if your ad is denied.

If you’re looking to create a Managed Ad campaign, you must contact Reddit’s ads team.

Make the most of your Reddit ads

With enough knowledge about this unique and diversified platform — and enough effort put into your Reddit ads. You can reach your audience more than ever.

Whether you opt for Self Serve ads or Managed ads, your prospects deserve a great user experience so they convert on your offer. Sign up for an Instapage Enterprise demo today.