Reddit launches Conversation Placement for ads to reach users in comment threads
Reddit has launched its latest advertiser offering Conversation Placement which allows brands to reach its users while they are commenting on a passion and/or interests.
According to the platform’s insights, Reddit users contribute to more than 350,000 conversations on the platform every day, with 42% of the average Reddit user’s time spent in a conversation thread.
The Conversation Placement sits within a conversation thread, under the original post and above the first comment, giving advertisers the opportunity to scale reach beyond Reddit feeds and connect with users where they are the most “leaned-in”.
Reddit ads have never before appeared in conversation threads, allowing advertisers to expand the reach of their campaigns and speak to a new, untapped audience, many of which land in conversation threads directly from SEO searches and are unreachable anywhere else on the platform.
Reddit said the placement drives a “deeper audience connection and contextual richness”, as it allows advertisers to show up in discussions relevant to their campaigns.
Reddit recently opened its first office in Australia, led by David Ray.
Reddit global EVP and president of advertising, Harold Klaje, said: “Reddit users thrive on conversations and are highly engaged in unique dialogues around their passions. Conversation Placement is an opportunity for all Reddit advertisers to drive engagement on the platform, positioning themselves right where people are connecting with one another, in a way they can’t on any other platform.”
Klaje added: “This launch is an outcome of our close and continued collaboration with Reddit advertisers to ensure solutions that tap into what makes Reddit special. It’s the latest example of our ads business continuing to meet the needs of advertisers. We’ve invested a lot in the past year to evolve our product offering to ensure brands can best leverage the power and value of Reddit, and creating opportunities for advertisers to meaningfully engage with users is key to delivering on this.”
In addition, Reddit said when combined with home, popular or community feed placements, advertisers can drive higher performance with Conversation Placement as well as more cost-effective campaign outcomes. Advertisers that target both the Reddit Feed and Conversations Placement will be able to reach millions more unique users than when targeting with a single placement, increasing overall reach by up to 20%.
Reddit beta-tested Conversation Placement with more than 600 advertising partners for almost 12 months, running campaigns across entertainment, consumer tech, finance, publishing and CPG for partners across all industries, verticals and campaign objectives. In aggregate, beta test partners saw a 9% average increase in clickthrough rate (CTR), 10% higher downstream conversion rate (CVR), and 23% lower Cost Per Click (CPC) rate when using both Conversation placement and Feed.
Test partners have included Adobe, HBO Max, Nespresso and The Washington Post. Targeting a wide range of student and creator related interest groups, Adobe worked with Reddit’s KarmaLab team to ensure compelling and engaging creative for their placement in conversations happening in Reddit communities, which combined with in-feed creative has resulted in an average increase in CTR of 20% and a 25% decrease in CPC compared to an in-feed post alone.
Meanwhile, Reddit today made headlines after it banned the subreddit r/NoNewNormal, which had more than 120,000 users and included the topic of societal changes brought on by COVID-19.
This comes one week after Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman initially refused to ban the subreddit saying in a post: “Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate. This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus. This includes conversations that criticise those that disagree with the majority opinion.”
However, after 135 Reddit communities had protested Reddit’s refusal and gone dark, which means non-members will be blocked from reading or joining a page, Reddit decided to ban the discussion forum.
A Reddit security staff member wrote in a post:“We found very clear signals indicating that r/NoNewNormal was the source of around 80 brigades in the last 30 days (largely directed at communities with more mainstream views on COVID or location-based communities that have been discussing COVID restrictions. This behaviour continued even after a warning was issued from our team to the moderators.”
