Getting Started With Reddit Ads For Businesses

Since its launch in 2005, Reddit has evolved from an open-participation forum to an influential discovery engine where people go to learn about new products, read honest reviews, get recommendations, and engage in discussions. What sets it apart from other platforms is that it is powered by real human experiences, reshaping how people search for information online.

For brands, it helps build trust and offers a unique opportunity to connect with high-intent audiences based on their interests, namely ‘Redditors', who are researching and ready to buy.

In this article, we explain how you can get started with launching Reddit Ads for businesses.

What Are Reddit Ads?

If you’re not already running Reddit Business Ads, then it may be something to consider adding to your search marketing mix. The platform delivers a comprehensive full-funnel approach, from awareness to consideration, in a place where user-generated content is organised into topic-specific communities called “subreddits” that rank based on a voting system. Its paid promotional content comes in a variety of formats and is integrated across the platform within feeds (Home, Popular, and Community) and within conversations, such as comment pages between posts and comment threads.

Reddit Ads Types

Reddit offers three different ad types to choose from: Reddit Takeover, Category Takeover, and First View, each designed to deliver a different level of visibility, from total brand immersion and targeted exposure to unique ad impression placements. To maximise performance, brands should pair campaign objectives with the right Reddit ad types and formats, while crafting creative copy that feels authentic, conversational, and native to the Reddit experience. We have listed the Reddit ad format options and what they are best suited for below.

Reddit Free-Form Ads

Best for brand awareness, reach, and traffic. This ad format is exclusive to Reddit, giving full control over visuals and links, mixing and matching photos, videos, GIFs, and rich text to best suit business goals, audience, and strategy.

Reddit Image Ads

Best for brand awareness, reach, traffic, conversions, apps, sales, and lead generation. This Reddit ad format is simple to set up as it only requires an image and a headline and is compatible with multiple aspect ratios and bid types.

Reddit Video Ads

Best for video views, brand awareness, reach, traffic, conversions, apps, sales, and lead generation. This ad format autoplays on Redditor’s feeds, showing up where people are most likely to watch, with videos up to 15 minutes long.

Reddit Carousel Ads

Best for brand awareness, reach, traffic, conversions, apps, and sales. This Reddit ad format features up to 10 swipeable images and videos in one ad to showcase products, tell stories, share educational content, and highlight testimonials.

Reddit Conversation Ads

These multi-placement ad formats can be used with all ad types, allowing businesses to become a part of the conversation through strategic Reddit Ads placements within audience threads from high-intent topic-specific searches.

Reddit Product Ads & Dynamic Product Ads 

These ad formats are quick and easy to build and update in real time, pulling data from a product catalog with the latest pricing, images, and descriptions. Reddit Shopping Ads are available in two formats, manual and dynamic. Reddit Dynamic Product Ads let machine-learning do the heavy lifting, using automated targeting to serve the most relevant products to the most relevant audiences based on their shopping signals.

Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' Ads

Another unique Reddit ad format designed to increase engagement through live Q&A sessions. These can be hosted on a brand profile or within a relevant community. Once ended, the post becomes an everlasting brand asset.

How Are Reddit Ads Targeted?

Reddit boasts a community-based structure, where businesses can more easily reach niche audiences actively searching for the products and services that they are most interested in. Alongside interests, Reddit Ads targeting options include locations, keywords, demographics and devices, with custom tools such as the Reddit Pixel and Conversions API leveraging machine learning to help brands deliver the right message to the right users at the right time.

The most effective Reddit Ads campaigns layer multiple targeting types, such as interests and keywords. For businesses looking for a more hands-off approach, Reddit’s automated targeting option analyses signals such as ad creative, landing page content and user behaviour to identify and reach the most relevant audience for each ad. Brands can also reconnect with site visitors, cart abandoners, and existing customers to move them further down the marketing funnel by tapping into historical data including customer lists, and creating custom retargeting segments.

How Effective Are Reddit Ads?

How effective your Reddit Ads are ultimately comes down to the strength of your overall paid social strategy and set up within your Reddit Ads account. We have bulletpointed seven best practices below to help maximise performance and ensure you get the most out of your Reddit Ads activity:

• Make sure all of your Reddit ads headlines are unique
• Combine multiple format and placement types
• Optimise your creatives for mobile
• Keep video content short (5-15 seconds)
• Brand your assets by including a logo
• Keep it conversational and consider context
• Utilise overlay text and closed captions

Still unsure whether Reddit Ads are right for your business? Reddit has arguably become one of the most influential paid social platforms alongside TikTok, Meta, and LinkedIn.

Alongside it's effectiveness as a Paid Social channel, it is also considered an important signal for AI Search Optimisation, joining a new ecosystem around AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. As AI Search continues to reward original, experience-led content, it is no surprise that we are regularly seeing Reddit threads and comments feature among the top-cited sources for Large Language Models (LLMs).

This combination makes Reddit a powerful platform for visibility across both Paid Social and Organic Search channels, and brands that learn how to authentically engage on Reddit will be far better positioned to stay relevant, and reach their desired audiences.