Ever wondered how advertising on Reddit looks like? Having problems to understand how ads on “The front page of the internet” work? Then worry not! This article will help you understand how Reddit Ads work and I will teach you exactly how to create your first campaign.
And as always, I will share some valuable tips to help you create the perfect reddit ad 🙂
What is Reddit Ads?
Reddit ads is your only way to “officially” advertise on Reddit without getting banned or scolded by the community. I believe there’s not a single person online who haven’t heard about Reddit – It could be from your local news station or from some sad viral story that first appeared on Reddit.
It’s not by chance Reddit is called “The front page of the internet” – All it takes is one good post and within hours it will be on every major news channel. This is when many dropshippers make their way into reddit thinking they’re about to cash-in big time. But they quickly realize that’s not the case…
Redditors HATE ads and self promotion! The community is often portrayed to be toxic towards content they don’t like and with the upvote/downvote system, if you post something they don’t like(like your store link) your post will never pass the “fresh” section. Followed by a quick ban from one of the moderators.
So the only choice left is to use Reddit Ads and this guide is going to teach you how to do it.
Note: There are still some ways you can advertise on Reddit for free and get away with it. I recommend you read my 4 traffic sources to get customers for free article and check the tips I gave about Reddit. You will have to be creative and blend in with the community in order to have a chance for a successful self-promotion.
Why Use Reddit Ads?
Simply because it works! Reddit gives you the option to target specific subreddits and this gives us an option to show our ad to really passionate people in our niche. Let’s take the picture above as an example.
As you can see, this is a breastfeeding community with 53.3k people in it. Most of the people in this subreddit are parents and if we’re in the family niche, this subreddit is definitely a good targeting choice. If we sell a product that can make breastfeeding moms life easier, then an ad directed to this specific subreddit can make us some money!
And it’s not the only Mom/Dad subreddits out there so we have plenty of targeting options if we just take time and look around.
And if you’re selling in big niches like gaming, accessories, etc, then the audiences you will find on Reddit are HUGE.
Note: As I already said, redditors really don’t like self promotion and ads but if you’re running them through their platform and offer something useful and not selling some junk stuff then you won’t have any problems. You may get a few downvotes but you will get clicks and eventually sales 🙂
And it also depends on what subreddit you target – The more mature the audience, the better they accept your ads.
How To Advertise On Reddit?
So after explaining What and Why, let’s move on to how create your first Reddit campaign. You need to signup to reddit and then visit their ad page ads.reddit.com
On your ads dashboard, click create campaign.
We have 5 options in which only 3 should interest us(Unless you’re planning to advertise your mobile app): Traffic, Video Views and Conversions.
I usually go with traffic campaign where you pay per click on your ad and I measure the success of my ads by using UTMs on my links and by checking my stats on google analytics. If you advertise your shopify store, use UTMs on your links inside reddit ads and you can then check the order report and see which UTM brought you the sale.
Click on conversion details inside your shopify order for a specific order:
Click on View full sessions:
And as you can see, Shopify displays the UTMs I used. This specific campaign is a CBO campaign, cbo4 is 4th cbo adset that brought me today’s sale. You can quickly create UTMs with the help of Google’s campaign builder – https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
So in the end, the link people will click on reddit will look like this: youstore.com?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=breastfeedingsub&utm_campaign=coolproductvid1
A reddit conversion campaign will also charge you for clicks but in order for it to properly work, you need to install the reddit pixel. This will require you to make some code changes and I don’t find it necessary for beginners. Reddit communities are so specific and passionate, that Traffic campaign will be enough.
Next is the ad group:
You can see I explained about some of the fields we see in the picture above.
Next we have the option to choose specific subreddits, set our daily budget and adjust our bid:
I only target specific subreddits and I don’t touch the reddit interests and as you can see in this picture, I chose to target the breastfeeding and breakingmom subreddits. Daily budget is entirely up to you and you can always choose to run a lifetime budget. I think $5-$10 a day is a good number to test the water and see what results you will get.
You can leave the bid as it is on $0.5 per click. It doesn’t mean you will pay a minimum of $0.5 per click – There are multiple factors that will decide how much you will pay per click. If your ad is good and the product you sell is relevant to the subreddit, your bid may be much lower than $0.5. I usually pay $0.2~$0.3 per click and as long as I get results, I’m ok with it 😉
The final stage is choosing the ad type you want to run:
With link post chosen, Reddit will ask you to upload 2 photos to fit their displays both on mobile and web app.
Follow the instructions and upload images with the exact dimensions as they ask you too. The destination URL is where you put your product/store link with the UTMs(if you’ll use them). Display URL is optional but I suggest you use that to display your short store url. No one wants to see your full product link especially if you use UTMs.
The little checkbox below is if you decide to allow comments on your Reddit post. If you decide to allow comments, prepare to answer them because some of them will be just spam and some may be even really negative. You can’t delete them so prepare for the worst.
If you believe in your product/service and think you can answer every comment nicely, then a discussion on your ads won’t hurt your conversions and it can only help you to get more attention to your ads and eventually more sales.
If you choose to upload a video ad, then click on “video post” and upload your video – No special instructions here.
Sometimes the video upload can be a bit buggy and you may need to create your campaign again.
Next step is to choose your call-to-action button if you want it to appear and check how your ad will look like in the preview:
Reddit will use your username so my suggestion is to create a new brandname username or you can always use your regular username but make sure it doesn’t have any strange stuff there. Redditors can click on your username and check all your activity on reddit. Moms will not buy from a 22-year-old gamer dude breastfeeding products.
You can switch your preview from desktop to mobile to see how will it look.
Important:
Reddit is not Facebook and ad texts like “OMG! This dog collar is awesome <3 Buy it here => link” or “A must have for MOMS! LIMITED STOCK!!!” are considered spammy. When writing your ad text, think as if you’re speaking to a person. Make it look like a conversation and don’t make yourself look like a sleazy salesman.
You can try a bit more agressive text from what I showed you here but don’t make it look like spam.
That’s It:
You can click next and your ad will go to review process. It may take some time for it to be approved and the ad team can sometimes ask you to fix something within your ad but if everything is legal, then your ad should be approved and run.
To Sum It Up:
To succeed with Reddit Ads, you have to first understand the platform and the people in it. Signup to reddit and browse it for a few days just to get the hang of it and only then launch your first ads on the platform.
Hope you liked this week’s article and let me know if you have any questions.
Good luck!
Struggling to find good products to sell? Not sure who’s your target audience? Tired of losing money on products you were sure were “winners”?
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Daniel Aloni is one of the leading mentors in the Ecomhunt family. Daniel is a highly experienced Print On Demand seller with multiple 6 figures successful launches.
Hi,
Good article, how are your conversions for reddit ads? Any sales?
Thanks
We had sales from reddit and some solid results but Facebook is still the King. Reddit is a great place to sell a subscription type of service or if you’re selling a product.
If you’re selling products, you should first check your audiences and work based on that.
I am pretty active in Reddit and sometimes I may find a really big and passionate subreddit I can target so that’s when I go on aliexpress and other sources to see if I can find a good product to sell them.
I’ve tried Reddit ads using the same format, but got 0 sales and barely any impressions. You don’t need to do any UTMs or whatever. You can track conversions and the like on the Reddit ads dashboard, and on your Shopify store.
Not to diminish your work, but this is very bare bones. We’d like to see a concrete example. Your campaign wide ROAS, and break even ROAS? How long did it take to get a sale on Reddit ads? What sort of ad works best on the platform? What sort of products?
If you’re going to list some facts at least get them right.
1. You can track conversions on Reddit only if you installed their conversion pixel as I stated in this article. Shopify and other platforms don’t have any “easy” way to install Reddit traffic like with FB or Google analytics code. This means that you have to edit your code and manually place the pixel code. I find it easy to do but I know that majority of the readers here are new and this will be complicated for them.
So instead I proposed a simple solution which is to use UTMs and then you can easily track conversions on Shopify and Google analytics. Google analytics may be too hard for people to understand here so that’s why I explained how can they see their UTMs easily on Shopify.
*And no matter where you advertise, UTMs is a must if you’re using your full store url and not bitly or other short link services. FB fails to track conversions and having UTMs helped me a lot to understand from where the sale came.
2. How can you get barely any impressions? Reddit is known for their cheap CPMs. Currently the app I’m running on Reddit has a CPM of $0.4. And how many times did you try? Once or twice? Do you know how much I spent on FB before I even got my first sale? And it was back in the POD days(2014) when it was just a Post engagement campaign and poof you got sales…
Sure if you target a few gaming subreddits and try to sell them a cheap ass “gaming” mouse from aliexpress then 0 sales is all you’ll get.
3. Yep I forgot to let people know what works but already someone in the comments asked and I told him. I will tell again: Services, apps, subscriptions and basically everything else. Yes, physical products work too – Choose your niche carefully before you choose your product and avoid toxic communties where majority are young toxic people.
But if you have a quality product, the young toxic ones will buy as well.
4. How long did it take to get a sale? Not much. And how much did it take me to get an app install? After 3 hours, I got my 1st install. Does it really matter? You know how many factors you have here? I remember when I first started with POD and Facebook ads, I was spending money getting 0 sales. And even when I got a sale, I had to at least get 3 sales for the shirt to be printed and to get profit. So 0 profit.
And then I saw some Indian, Pakistani, Viet guys creating their post showing sales on the 1st try. Did I care about it? NO. I read these posts, read their tips, looked at my campaigns and continued with my work till I had my first success with 150+ sales.
5. ROAS? ROI? Maybe I’ll share with you my print on demand stores and my reddit campaigns too? And if I did share it, would it really matter?
please make more post for free traffic
Will see how I can work on that 🙂
Edit to last comment, I appealed my personal acc that was disabled 9 years ago and I got it back! Very surprised and very happy. Will continue with fb 😀
Hey Anthony! If you sent me a friend request on Facebook, my profile has no picture but I’m active there. So send me a message we’ll talk 🙂