POV: Reddit Trending Takeovers

Background:

Reddit has announced a new ad offering called Trending Takeovers that will allow advertisers to appear in the ‘Popular’ section of the feed and the Search tab, the two most visited areas of Reddit.

Details and Implications:

‘Trending Takeovers’ on Reddit will last for a maximum of 24 hours and run in the trends section where users see what is being discussed across the site. They will be visible in the second slot of the Trending Today section on the Popular feed and in the second section of the Trending Today drop-down in the Search tab. Being visible in these two areas could put brands in front of more than a third of daily users according to Reddit. Targeting options include keywords and different communities.

At the moment, Reddit’s ad offering includes Promoted Posts that are similar to Facebook News Feed ads. This new ad unit will be similar to Twitter’s promoted Trends and is an attempt from Reddit to expand its ad offering for brands. Shariq Rizvi, Reddit’s Vice President of Ads Products and Engineering said that Reddit’s focus for 2020 was about ‘maximizing new and premium opportunities for brands to authentically engage with Reddit users’.

Reddit claims to have 430 million monthly active users which is more than Twitter (330 million). It also has more than 100,000 communities. Communities, known as subreddits on the platform, are streams of user posts and discussions relating to different topics. For example, r/Basketball is a selection of posts from users about Basketball. If used well, Trending Takeovers could be highly valuable to brands. Especially if campaigns are reactive and contextualized to current events.

During the beta testing of Trending Takeovers, which included more than 15 brand partners, the Trending Takeovers resulted in a click-through rate two-times greater than the industry standard for social media platforms. Video completion rates were also four-times greater than Reddit Promoted Posts. As an example, the cleaning brand, Method, made ‘plants’ a trending topic and created a campaign about how its dish soap can help shine houseplants, putting its products in front of thousands of users.

At the moment, Trending Takeovers is not an automated process so brands will have to go directly to Reddit to advertise but this may change in the future. Prices have not yet been confirmed.

There is naturally some concern over how users will react. The communities on Reddit rely on authenticity so it might be harder for Reddit to make this a common feature, than it was for Twitter.

Summary:

Trending Takeovers on Reddit could be a great opportunity for advertisers to be part of popular conversations and maximise their brand awareness online, especially if the opportunity is used wisely. This offering is part of Reddit’s advertising goal for 2020, so we could see more opportunities like this in the near future.

Further reading:

Reddit | AdAge | TechCrunch | Social Media Today | Search Engine Journal