Reddit Ads Cost: Maximizing ROI and Budget Efficiency

This post will discuss how much reddit ads cost and the different options you have for targeting your advertising. We’re going to go over how much it would cost to advertise on reddit and where your advertising dollars will be spent.

So how much do Reddit ads cost? Reddit ads cost anywhere between $0.20 to $100 per thousand ad impressions. The minimum amount to start a Reddit advertising campaign is $5 per day.

And that’s it. The rest – how much you spend – is really up to you.

Are Reddit Ads Worth It? Yes, Reddit Ads are worth it. Reddit Ads are worth it because they can be targeted to specific subreddits, and the cost per thousand impressions is relatively low.

  • Reddit Advertising Cost: $0-$100/1000 Impressions
  • Minimum Spend To Start Campaign Is Five Dollars A Day
  • Targeting: Can Be Targeted To Specific Subreddits
  • Cost Per Thousand Impressions Is Relatively Low.

Reddit Ads Cost, Reddit Ads CPM & Your Reddit Advertising Budget

Are you looking for a way to advertise your product or service on Reddit? You’re in luck because advertising on Reddit is very affordable and can be done by anyone.

Do Reddit ads work? Yes, Reddit ads work and can be a highly effective way to market your business, products, and services. The comparatively low Reddit ad cost, interest-targeting features, and relatively low competition for ads make Reddit an ideal advertising platform for any business to make their mark.

That bid is the maximum amount you are willing to spend on your ad to receive 1000 views. Usually, you’ll pay less, since if you win the bidding for the “inventory” – the ad space on the subreddits you’re targeting – you’ll pay whatever the second-highest bidder pledged, plus one cent. So if you bid $30, but your competitor bid $25, the amount you’ll pay for 1000 views – your CPM – will be 25 dollars and 1 cent.

Why Should You Consider This Platform for Your Marketing Efforts?

With a reputation as one of the modern internet’s nerve centers, and as a center of gravity for online culture, Reddit had more than 1.5 billion unique visits from mobile and desktop users in September 2017 alone. Just under half or 43% of visitors came from the United States alone. So roughly 750 million unique visits are being made to Reddit every month.

Those are a lot of eyeballs and there is a lot of potential to draw their attention to Reddit ads for your product or service, or whatever else you want to promote.

And What About the Costs?

But how much does it cost? To answer that, we should go over the basics of how the Reddit advertising system works. It’s simple enough, although it has recently undergone fundamental targeting changes, with the result being that overall costs will go up. In any case, your campaign is one promotion and its respective targeting.

You can target specific subreddits, locations (at the country level and, within the US, at the city level) and best times of day, platforms (desktop, mobile, or both), and interests. You also set your campaign schedule and your budget. In regards to the former, you can set it to run continuously until you end it, or set start and end dates.

You can also set the amount you are ready to spend daily or the lifetime budget of your campaign. You can either choose to spend a maximum of $40 daily (although in the past you might not ever have hit that cap due to insufficient visitors to your targeted subreddits, recent changes make reaching a daily cap much more likely) or $40 over the course of your whole campaign.

What’s the Biggest Advantage of Advertising on This Platform?

One of the biggest advantages is that marketers can target their ads to specific subreddits or user profiles, which allows them to hone in on the right audience. Additionally, Reddit has a wide variety of different ad formats so businesses can choose the best one for their needs. Ads are also relatively inexpensive and there are no minimum spends required, so businesses of any size can take advantage.

To find out more about marketing on Reddit, don’t forget to check out our Reddit Resources.

How To Advertise on Reddit

Great Reddit ads that really work have a few trademarks that they share.

Firstly, and most importantly, these ads share value with the Reddit community. You can create value in your ads by offering important knowledge, coupon codes, or another type of exclusive deal or discount for Reddit users.

Reddit as a whole can be somewhat resistant to marketing, but if you offer them something of value, they will likely be more receptive to your business and more willing to view and interact with any future ads that you put decide to publish. 

Top-performing ads are also generated by companies that understand Reddit.

If you are an active community member who contributes to conversations across the site, you’ll likely find higher rates of success with your ads. Even if you are simply an observer of Reddit, it can help you get to know the average Redditor and what types of content they like to interact with.

If you can strike the right tone with a subreddit, your ads will work. Ads that cater to specific problems and questions put forth by Reddit users can be some of the best-performing ads on the platform. 

Visually appealing ads will also contribute to your success with Reddit ads.

The typical Redditor is scrolling through their feed and will only stop for something that catches their eye. If your ad copy is bland or your photos are lifeless, your ad may be ignored by your target audience. Always make sure that you are putting the best of the best on Reddit if you want your ads to be successful. In addition to visually striking ads, you’ll also want to make full use of the audience targeting tool at your fingertips to ensure your beautiful ads are being seen by the right people. 

How to Set up a Successful Reddit Ad Campaign

When you are ready to set up your ad campaign, you may be tempted to get started right away. Before you sit down with Reddit’s step-by-step ad campaign creator, it can help to have some of your key information already put together. By doing this work beforehand, it ensures that you will have a smooth and stress-free ad creation experience. 

The best way to get started with Reddit advertising is to create a profile and join communities relevant to your business. This will help you build relationships and gain the trust of potential customers. Once you’re in the Reddit community, you can start creating targeted ads that are tailored to the interests of the people you’re targeting.

Here are a few things you should get to work on before you set up your ads: 

  • Gather your subreddit list. Your top goal is to find subreddits that align with your business, products, or services. Make sure that any subreddits you include in your ad campaigns have a high number of subscribers and that they are an active community with new postings daily. If a subreddit has strict rules about self-promotion, you can reasonably assume that they won’t be open to your ads either and omit them from your list. 
  • Decide on your campaign objective. You’ll have the option to choose Brand Awareness and Reach, Traffic, Conversions, Video Views, or App installs. 
  • Determine how many ad groups you will have. Each campaign can have multiple ad groups based on your target audience, behavior, and ideal ad schedule. 
  • Choose your target location, preferred device, and time of day when you wish to run your ads. You can determine this information by studying the subreddits on your list ahead of time and making notes about these details. 
  • Think about how much you want to spend. You’ll want to have your budget goals in mind before you set up your campaign. If you’re just starting out, you can always run a smaller ad as a test to see what kind of results you get. This can help you set your long-term budget for your Reddit ads. 
  • Decide how long you want your campaign to run for. If you’re testing, choose a shorter amount of time. Your ads can be stopped at any time, but if you’ve optimized for a longer span of time and decide to cut your ads short, your results will not be as powerful. 

One of the most important factors in any advertising campaign is your budget. Before setting up your ads, you should take a look at all of the budget options for Reddit and determine what will work best for your ads. Compared to other social sites, Reddit ads offer more affordable prices for their ads. 

Reddit Ads Pricing Optimization For Your Budget

One of the most important aspects of creating a quality ad that works well is to optimize your Reddit Ad budget. The amount you spend on your ads can greatly affect whether they are successful or unsuccessful. When you are establishing your budget, you’ll want to set out with a number in mind. Before you’ve started your campaign, consider what price you’d like to pay per conversion, per day, etc. When setting up your ad on Reddit, you’ll be able to choose from a daily budget, a lifetime budget, or a bid that includes the newly instated cost-per-click method. 

For each ad, you’ll have the option to set up a daily budget. The minimum amount for your daily budget is $5 per day. The daily budget can be applied to any type of ad. Remember that your budget is a huge factor in how often your ads are seen, and sometimes picking the cheapest option may result in fewer ad interactions than you want. Sometimes the final number for the day will be a bit more or a bit less than your target number. You will be charged roughly the amount that you input as your daily budget every day while your campaign is active. 

You also have the option to choose a lifetime budget for any of your ad campaigns. For both lifetime and daily budgets, you will not be able to switch the budget type once the campaign has started so make sure you choose the best option for your ads. Lifetime budgets will attempt to disperse your entire budget over the date range that you have selected. Reddit will attempt to spend around the same amount each day until your ad money runs out. This means your ads may get turned off a few days before your chosen end date if they spend the budget. 

The final budget method available is the bid. Bids must be used for specific campaign objectives. Within the bidding method, you’ll have three different options: CPM, CPC, or CPV. Reddit CPM is used for Brand Awareness and to Reach campaign objectives and you can select your bid per 1,000 impressions. The second bid type, CPC, is used for Traffic, Conversions, or App Install campaign objectives. With CPC, you’ll add your bid per click. The final bid method, CPV is used for the Video Views campaign objective. For this option, you’ll add your bid per video view. 

Reddit Ad competition

Reddit is a great choice for advertisers who are not looking to compete in an oversaturated ads market. On Facebook, you will find nine million advertisers who use the site to promote their businesses, products, and services. This number is constantly growing and shows no sign of slowing down. With such a large number of ads populating the average Facebook user feed, it is easier for them to tune out ads as “noise”. The millions of advertisers with established ad campaigns and retargeting campaigns can make it difficult for a newcomer to be seen. 

Reddit’s Advantages Over Other Platforms

Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, you can expect to see similar numbers of advertisements popping up on feeds around the world. Ads on Twitter are also running rampant in people’s feeds. Even high-follower accounts are starting to notice that the site is slowly being overrun by ads. On social media sites, users often complain about the ad ratio – the number of ads as compared to the amount of other users’ content – being skewed more heavily toward ads. This tends to make users feel a bit more disconnected from the site and the ads as well.

Because of Redditors’ natural aversion to advertisements, the site has historically had a low number of advertisers, meaning there is more space for your ads to shine. The dominant theory among advertisers who swear by Reddit is that Redditors are not averse to advertisements, but to bad advertisements. There is plenty of room to win over Reddit with your high-quality advertisements. 

As long as you stick to ads that create value, avoid overposting, and other scam tactics to try to boost traffic, use active subreddits to their full advantage, and create and maintain a budget that works with your campaign goals. you’ll likely see some very positive results from your Reddit ads.

Reddit Ad Pitfalls

If you are new to Reddit, you may fall victim to one of the pitfalls that keep your ad from working well. In order to achieve the best results from your ads, you want to avoid getting downvotes, marketing to the wrong people, and not doing subreddit research. All of these aspects, when done incorrectly, will have a negative effect on your marketing efforts and may result in a lackluster ad campaign. Reddit campaigns often require a little more time and research than other social media platforms but can produce much richer results as well. 

Let’s take a look at each pitfall in-depth so that you can get the most out of your Reddit ads: 

  1. Downvotes. Reddit relies on a system of voting to determine what content is the most popular. Content like posts and comments can be upvoted or downvoted based on whether or not the audience approves.

 Reddit ads can also be upvoted or downvoted. Your ad can receive downvotes if it contains poorly written or scammy-sounding ad copy, has low-quality images or videos, or appears on subreddits where it is irrelevant. In order to avoid this fate, make sure that your ads are in great condition and that they are being shown to your target audience. 

  1. Marketing to the wrong people. Reddit has some of the most detailed audience-targeting features available. You can narrow down your audience by age, gender, location, and interests. You’ll also get access to demographic research that helps you understand your audience’s online habits.

 In order to run a successful ad, you’ll need to go into the setup process with an idea of who your target audience is and stay consistent as you set up your ad. If you are familiar with your audience going into this process, it will be easier to find your target market on Reddit. 

  1. Not doing subreddit research. Subreddits are the key element of Reddit and, thus, of Reddi advertising. You can target specific subreddits when you are creating your ad. You’ll want to research the types of content that perform well in this subreddit, ensure that it is incredibly relevant to your business, and see what time of day it’s users are most active. 

This information will be invaluable for your ad set up. After you’ve observed and maybe even participated in Reddit for a while, you’ll be ready to advertise to them strategically. 

The New Ad Targeting System

Except – it would be it, if the old targeting system of Reddit – that is, what is called a “contextual” targeting system – was still in place. But since September 2017, the Reddit targeting system has changed.

It is now behavioral, and the distinction is making a big difference in how fast those views are reaching those eyeballs and what kind of eyeballs they are reaching. And on the bottom line, it determines how fast your ad budget spends itself and what kind of returns it produces. What would you say if your CPA – your cost per acquisition – went from $10 to $100?

That’s what happened to a small business owner who sold a small food product with decent, but not extravagant, margins – jerky. Whereas previously the Reddit advertising targeting system had been “contextual category”-based, it was now being changed into a “behavioral” one. Contextual category systems target advertising on websites and pages themselves. In Reddit’s case – the subreddits.

You could set your ad to target only the r/jerky subreddit, and the only people who would see it would be the people who were visiting the actual subreddit when they were visiting the subreddit. So your ad would appear to people interested in jerky when they were visiting a discussion board about jerky.

This could result in high interest and good click-through rates. Marketers who understood how to target in this way could get very good returns on their investment.

But Reddit changed. Now the advertising system targets users, and not the pages (subreddits.) It’s behavioral. What that means is that now, the same jerky ad will appear to people who have visited the r/jerky subreddit in the past.

See the difference? Your ad will appear to someone browsing, for example, r/physics because they have visited the r/jerky subreddit at some point in the past. You’ll reach 1000 views in a heartbeat, but jerky might not be relevant or interesting to those people at all at that time.

Professionals consider behavioral targeting systems to be much better, overall than contextual category systems. That is due to the detailed, granular targeting options it provides. Being based on the dynamic data and search histories of individual users, instead of relatively static web pages, is what makes this possible.

However, Reddit’s targeting system isn’t very well developed at the moment.

The Changes to the Bottom Line

That above-mentioned jerky seller found that his cost-per-acquisition went up tenfold. And if you’re considering getting into Reddit advertising, or are already working in that field, be sure to take this into account. Reddit ad campaigns have become more expensive.

They might provide you with better targeting options in the future, too, but the only thing that is certain is that the “old way” of advertising on Reddit is gone, along with the old prices.

Despite the changes made to the way Reddit’s ad targeting system works that has led to many marketers experiencing higher costs per acquisition, you shouldn’t give up on the site. Reddit is still a unique place and can truly be called “the front page of the internet.”

It’s a tough nut to crack, but if you manage it, the rewards can be and usually are great.

Is Advertising on Reddit Worth It?

Advertising on Reddit can be a great way to get the word out about your business or product. The site has millions of users, and it’s a popular spot for conversation, so it’s definitely worth considering if you’re looking to reach a specific audience. In comparison to other advertising services, Reddit has several advantages that make it attractive for businesses.

Overall, Reddit advertising can be a great way to reach out to potential customers and get the word out about your business. With its targeted options and variety of ad formats, it can be an effective tool for businesses of any size. Additionally, its low cost makes it accessible for those with limited budgets. If you’re looking to reach a specific audience, Reddit is definitely worth considering.

Reddit Resources

The Complete List of Subreddits That You Can Advertise On
Reddit Polls
How to Get on The Front Page of Reddit
How to Block Subreddits?
What Is The Reddit Logo Called?
What Age Group Uses Reddit?
How Do I Promote My Product On Reddit?
Guide To Getting Backlinks From Reddit
Reddit Ads vs Facebook Ads
How To Advertise On Reddit For Free
Reddit Ad Examples
Reddit Ads API – Detailed Set Up & Usage Guide