Reddit Introduces Trending Takeovers for Brands and Advertisers

Reddit has introduced Trending Takeovers, a new way for brands to reach users on its platform.

For a while now, Reddit has been working to court advertisers on its platform.

Back in 2016, the social media company introduced programmatic advertising, including a search-based targeting tool for advertisers. Then three years later, Reddit started offering cost-per-clicks ads, which received mixed reviews from marketers.

In June 2019, the company partnered with Oracle on a brand safety initiative. The aim was simple: to assure brands that their content would not appear in unsavory subreddits.

Now, the company is introducing a new ad product called Trending Takeovers, which allows brands to pay to trend on Reddit. Thanks to the new ad offering, brands can buy a prominent placement on the social platform’s Popular feed within the search tab for 24 hours.

In a statement, VP of ad products and engineering at Reddit, Shariq Rizvi said:

“With millions of searches taking place every day and over one-third of users coming to Reddit’s Popular feed daily, brands can now be part of where cultural trends are born online—Reddit.”

Here’s how the new ad product works.

Using Trending Takeovers to Buy Prime Placement on Reddit

A landing page would appear to users who click on a promoted trend on Reddit. Aside from advertising content, the page will also contain organic materials, including related discourse from various subreddits.

In the beta test, participants reported 5 percent CTR from Trending Takeovers’ landing page to the advertiser’s site. According to Reddit, that’s twice the industry average.

Reddit did not state the price range of the new ad product. However, a report from Adweek suggests that it could be going for six figures.

Promoted trends on Twitter can cost as much as $250,000 a day. “We’re probably not talking that kind of money, but I’d expect minimums around $100,000 [for Trending Takeovers],” a media buyer told Adweek.

At the moment, Trending Takeovers is only available to 15 companies, including Spotify, Adobe, and Method. However, the full rollout should follow after six months of beta testing.