On March 9th, Reddit announced its first trending ad product, “Trending Takeover.” Brands who use it even have a choice of two positions: Reddit’s Search tab and Popular feed for up to 24 hours.
To sell it to advertisers, it refers to over 430 million monthly active users, one-third of which are daily visitors to the Popular feed. That represents over 143 million people “in an active, information-gathering mindset” for brands to engage.
The Proof
Reddit extended the use of Trending Takeover to over 15 partners. One of the first brands to test it was Method, which used Trending Takeover to build up its brand awareness and draw viewers to its video featuring the “plant doctor” Hilton Carter.
Method’s Trending Takeover campaign achieved a comparably higher click through rate than “the industry standard for social platforms” and reported good results for video completion.
Connie Chen, Vice President of Brands at Method, reported: “‘As the home to so many plant communities and enthusiasts, Reddit was the ideal place to get in front of consumers in a delightful way and reach audiences at scale.’”
Some Reddit members are extremely passionate about their plants, and they can be found under various communities that Method targeted, including r/houseplants, r/gardening, and r/malelivingspace.
To Learn More
Reddit doesn’t post any ad rates on its site. Instead, it directs brands that are interested to fill out a form on its Advertise on Reddit page where it reminds them of the following benefits:
Target your audience
Reach passionate and diverse communities organized around thousands of different topics
Tell your story
Achieve your campaign objective, whether it’s starting a conversation or selling products
Measure your success
View your campaign metrics in a centralized dashboard, then analyze your results to optimize performance
Reddit’s Gain
Shariq Rizvi, Vice President of Ads Product and Engineering at Reddit, was quoted in the announcement saying how this launch fits into the company strategy: “For Reddit, a large focus for 2020 is about maximizing new and premium opportunities for brands to authentically engage with Reddit users.”
Of course, it’s also about monetizing that content by getting companies to pay for that engagement. So long as the audience remains receptive, everybody wins.