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Hey bold_panda, I'm the Group PM for Monetization and Growth @ Reddit. I'm really sorry to hear you're experiencing worse CPMs from this targeting change. We de

Hey bold_panda, I'm the Group PM for Monetization and Growth @ Reddit. I'm really sorry to hear you're experiencing worse CPMs from this targeting change. We definitely did not make this change to intentionally deceive you. You, the advertiser, are our the customer of our ads product. We certainly don't intend to reduce advertiser ROI, because at the end of the day if you are unhappy with your ad performance and leave that doesn't boost our ad revenue at all. To clarify what happened here, around the time we released our new ads platform - 6 months ago - we made some changes to targeting. Specifically, we modified subreddit targeting so that recent visitors to a subreddit or a post from a subreddit could also qualify to see ads targeted to that subreddit. We did not make any changes to how users who subscribe to a subreddit see ads (subreddit subscribers have been eligible to see ads targeted to a subreddit as long as they are visiting safe for work content since this commit ~2 years ago: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/f6a37b64c17579b82e22697b0e29dee50ebd2fd6 https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/f6a37b64c17579b82e22...) The release of our new ads platform also coincided with a re-release of our help center docs, which detail how subreddit targeting works. You can see the specific page here: https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/advertising/targeting-your-audience/targeting-subreddits https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/advertising/targeti... As noted there: "Targeting a subreddit means you are targeting the subscribers and recent visitors of that subreddit. Subscribers can see your ad while visiting the targeted subreddit and on other subreddits if they recently visited that targeted subreddit." We made this change in response to advertiser feedback that they would like to see an increase in targeted inventory, the idea being that if you're interested in jerky when you're on /r/jerky you're also interested in jerky when you're not on /r/jerky. This change has helped a good number of our advertisers successfully expand budgets while still meeting their return on ad spend goals, specifically for advertisers that target smaller subreddits regularly. We of course also limit the subreddits your ads can show on outside of the targeted subreddit to ones that are similarly "brand safe" to the ones you are targeting. (e.g. if you are explicitly targeting only NSFW subs your ad will show up on other NSFW subs, but if you're not targeting NSFW subs your ad will never show up on a NSFW sub) While we haven't done any sort of official analysis of CPM changes here, the expected effect of this change was that advertisers would be able to spend significantly more budget (a specific request of many of our advertisers). An expected side effect is that CPMs might possibly increase due to more bids on a per-impression basis, but since you're bidding on a wider range of inventory I would expect that you would be able to reduce your CPMs and still spend the same budget you were spending before, with similar performance. If there's something I can do to help please don't hesitate to email me directly (jamie@reddit.com). In the future for ads problems we also hang out on https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads https://www.reddit.com/r/redditads

gerdesj 9y ago
"We of course also limit the subreddits your ads can show on outside of the targeted subreddit to ones that are similarly "brand safe" to the ones you are targeting." How exactly do you evaluate "brand safe"? I can rarely get my own marketing department to a decision on this sort of thing in less than a few hours, yet you seem to be claiming you can do this on the fly for many advertisers. Yes, I have noted that your definition of "brand safe" seems to be rather narrower than mine 8)
bold_panda 9y ago
So you made this change to benefit advertisers not Reddit? That's hard to believe. CPMs should have gone down, not up, since your inventory was expanded meaning same demand for expanded supply. Y'all should also have reduced the minimum allowed bid down from 0.20 since you were expanding your inventory artificially w/ a coding change. You should have also expected that CPAs for your advertisers were going to go way down once you removed the ad from it's intended context. Either the logic driving the changes was weak or your explanation is lacking the whole truth. I see a business in Reddit who wasn't pleasing it's investors and did something hasty to increase revenue. There was no official communication of the subreddit targeting change to existing advertisers.
- jamiequint 9y ago
  Benefiting advertisers and benefitting Reddit are really the same thing. We can't please investors without building a long-term, sustainable business; we can't build a long-term, sustainable ads business without advertisers being happy with our product. > CPMs should have gone down, not up, since your inventory was expanded meaning same demand for expanded supply. This really depends, there's more supply available to you, but you're potentially competing against more advertisers as well. e.g. if, for example, there's high overlap between visitors to /r/jerky and /r/dota2 you might see increased CPMs, if there's not other advertisers competing for your same inventory you'd see lower CPMs.
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gerdesj 9y ago

"We of course also limit the subreddits your ads can show on outside of the targeted subreddit to ones that are similarly "brand safe" to the ones you are targeting." How exactly do you evaluate "brand safe"? I can rarely get my own marketing department to a decision on this sort of thing in less than a few hours, yet you seem to be claiming you can do this on the fly for many advertisers. Yes, I have noted that your definition of "brand safe" seems to be rather narrower than mine 8)

bold_panda 9y ago

So you made this change to benefit advertisers not Reddit? That's hard to believe. CPMs should have gone down, not up, since your inventory was expanded meaning same demand for expanded supply. Y'all should also have reduced the minimum allowed bid down from 0.20 since you were expanding your inventory artificially w/ a coding change. You should have also expected that CPAs for your advertisers were going to go way down once you removed the ad from it's intended context. Either the logic driving the changes was weak or your explanation is lacking the whole truth. I see a business in Reddit who wasn't pleasing it's investors and did something hasty to increase revenue. There was no official communication of the subreddit targeting change to existing advertisers.

jamiequint 9y ago
Benefiting advertisers and benefitting Reddit are really the same thing. We can't please investors without building a long-term, sustainable business; we can't build a long-term, sustainable ads business without advertisers being happy with our product. > CPMs should have gone down, not up, since your inventory was expanded meaning same demand for expanded supply. This really depends, there's more supply available to you, but you're potentially competing against more advertisers as well. e.g. if, for example, there's high overlap between visitors to /r/jerky and /r/dota2 you might see increased CPMs, if there's not other advertisers competing for your same inventory you'd see lower CPMs.
- deleted 9y ago
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