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Reddit’s Pitch deck to Advertisers

169 points by muratmutlu 13y ago

ziko 13y ago
I thought it's a joke until 7th or 8th slide.
Maxious 13y ago
Slide 10 "Take over a subreddit" is interesting. "Lets you include brand messaging, customised layouts and background colors". I wonder how r/HailCorporate (a subreddit that outs PR companies that spam and manipulate reddit) would feel about their layout being changed.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  At least personally, I react more negatively towards "manipulation" or "subliminal ads" more than outright, in your face ads (especially if done humorously or in good taste), so this "take over a subreddit" may be effective even towards the skeptics and naysayers.
- nthitz 13y ago
  Hmm. As far as I've seen these ads are just 350x250 and 300x100 blocks. I've never seen the layout or styling of a subreddit modified for an ad. And I imagine many of the communities being very upset if this did happen (Imagine EA branded /r/gaming). So that second bullet point seems confusing as I've never seen that and the two ads types they are selling don't seem to offer that capability. Has anyone ever seen the sort of ad that slide describes?? edit: I guess they do have that sort of functionality on reddit.tv but that doesn't seem to be what the slide deck is offering to me.
  - avree 13y ago
    I'm a mod of /r/business, and we had an American Express takeover. It was much more than just two block ads. Full banner, etc. Didn't last that long and our users really didn't seem to mind (or notice.)
  - jedberg 13y ago
    They usually ask the moderators if it is ok for that particular sponsor. Never had a mod say no though, since the sponsorship is usually pretty targeted and appropriate.
    - clicks 13y ago
      Have you ever had potential-sponsors request ownership of certain subreddits (for $, if it comes down to it)? I understand for big subreddits that wouldn't make sense (e.g., userbase would not take it kindly if r/funny was just bought (i.e. made ruling moderator of r/funny) one day by some media company). But I'm curious what would be the result of, say, the bicycling company Trek trying to become owners of the r/bicycles subreddit.
      - jedberg 13y ago
        "Ownership" of a reddit is not for sale, and never has been. The most you can do is get sponsorship rights for however long you want to pay for. However, a sponsor will never have control over the content (unless they manage to get someone on the moderator list I suppose, but they could do that regardless of sponsorship status).
- bvdbijl 13y ago
  I don't think you could actually change the layout, you would have to be moderator of that subreddit to do it
bowmessage 13y ago
I'm not quite sure the kitten with lightning coming out of its eyes is going to appeal to the major brand owners...
- muratmutlu 13y ago
  I quite like it for that reason
- deleted 13y ago
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- look_lookatme 13y ago
  In the post Old Spice Man world, plenty of major brands have embraced silly internet dadaism in aspects of their marketing.
- nwhitehead 13y ago
  Think of it this way, the advertisers that can't deal with kittens with lightning out of their eyes in the pitch deck are also likely the ones that would have a bad experience advertising on reddit and interacting with the community. By being authentic in the pitch deck, they deter clients that should be deterred, and attract clients they want to attract. Being authentic is a better, more efficient strategy.
- NameNickHN 13y ago
  I think it's a subtle way to weed all those companies out, that don't get reddit. I mean, if you don't understand the reference, how can you understand Reddit and its users?
  - bowmessage 13y ago
    Sorry, what's the reference to? I'm a big reddit user and don't really get it :/
rpgmaker 13y ago
So can people now stop saying that twitter+facebook killed digg?
zipop 13y ago
I wish it wasn't the case but sadly reddit does not deliver for advertisers. Any good pitch deck would include testimonials and case studies. Those ads on slide 8 with thousands of comments are run many, many months if not longer to collect all those comments. The comments I've received on my Reddit ads are a litany of haters. Why advertise to people not willing to support their advertisers and spend money? Not in every case but I have to believe by and large this is true. I will say for their pitch deck, they are representing their cat loving constituent well. So there's that.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, which subreddit was this? I mainly go to r/bicycling and I think a good natured ad in that subforum would be received quite positively for both small companies making a niche product or big name brands.
- frakkingcylons 13y ago
  I've had a similar experience. If you advertise to the Reddit (without specifying a subreddit), or one of the default subreddits, then expect to get a lot of flak in the comments unless you're advertising something that jives very well with Reddit's attitude on business "ethics". Most of the committed advertisers will also astroturf a couple of positive comments on different accounts to try to set the 'mood' for a comments page on their ad. Your mileage may vary with that, depends on how conspicuous/overt the comments are.
  - cm2012 13y ago
    Spot on on all counts.
- chris11 13y ago
  I think reddit can deliver for marketing purposes. Tony, a marketing manager at Amazon, has spent a decent amount of time on reddit, most of it on r/gamedeals, and has generated a lot of sales and goodwill. In fact I think that Amazon has gained a reputation of having better sales than steam does. Unfortunately for reddit, he has done this by building relationships on the site not by buying advertising. That subreddit is anti-advertising, they even banned all affiliate links with the exception of three charities. So investing in reddit can bring results, but ads don't always work.
zacmartin 13y ago
I work in a media agency and would love to sell in Reddit to my clients but if you've ever tried to use it as an advertiser it's an extremely poor offering. Sadly, this sales deck does nothing to change my perception.
- _lex 13y ago
  What makes it a poor offering?
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    Additionally, what would make it a better offering for your industry?
    - josh2600 13y ago
      Ahem!!! Here are the problems with Reddit Ads off the top of my head: 1) either all reddit or one subreddit. 1a) no easy way to advertise on multiple subreddits 2) no way to be an agency. So painful to manage multiple accounts even with RES 3) no API 4) no support 5) limited ad units In short, I would love to advertise on r/SysAdmin but I can't justify spending $20 a day for <100 clicks. Give me the ability to advertise to all of Reddit or specific subreddits. Seriously, why can't I just advertise on a set of subreddits? They should give it to me for the same price as all of reddit. Why? Because that gives me control of my brand. I don't want to advertise on all of reddit because there are a lot of subreddits I don't want my brand associated with, but if I could bid across multiple subreddits I would use the self-service a lot more. Admittedly, I haven't looked at the reddit ad units in about a year, and I know they're looking for a softdev to build a new ad platform, but geez, can I get a real ad experience please? Reddit has so many pageviews, let me tap that!
      - zacmartin 13y ago
        And a better interface with enhanced reporting ability. Hoping for something like AdWords, ended up with amateur-hour.
      - 13y ago
staunch 13y ago
They're playing up the subreddits, but the truth is that there are very few truly popular subreddits (that aren't default ones or NSFW). If they could just figure out how to grow a bunch more subreddits they could make so much more money. Plus, it'd make the site a whole lot better for users if the site's traffic was spread out across more interesting topics.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  Genuinely curious: at what point (numerically) would you consider a subreddit to be "popular" and how many subreddits currently fall into that category?
  - frakkingcylons 13y ago
    I'd personally consider the tipping point around 50,000 subscribers. From my personal experience with organically promoting a website on a subreddit with ~60K subscribers, a #1 post on a subreddit of that size garners around 6k to 7k clicks in one day. Afterwards over the next 3 days or so, the link would get around 3k clicks.
    - hkmurakami 13y ago
      Thanks! I frequent r/bicycling which has 80k+ subscribers, so it's good to know I have a feel for what the environment of a "popular" subreddit is like with respect to # of submissions, comments, etc.
    - TkTech 13y ago
      There's at least 234 subreddits with 50000+ subscribers[1] ...that's a fair number of highly targeted marketing channels. [1]: http://redditlist.com/ http://redditlist.com/
      - hkmurakami 13y ago
        I took a glance at the list and a lot of those subreddits aren't really suitable for advertisement targets. I'd guess that 2/3 of those 234 subreddits are addressable, so maybe 150 is a reasonable estimate.
QuantumGood 13y ago
"The Front Page of the Internet" is used as a frequent source by many profitable blogs. Reddit could just start their own, using itself as a source like so many others do.
searchergss 13y ago
Expected more from the Reddit deck than that. But, hey, that's an unreasonable expectation?
- baby 13y ago
  It does look unprofessional. I wonder if this is a tactic to show how easy they are to get in touch with? Like "easy advertising".
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    I think they do it that way in an attempt to filter the advertisers to only those who have a chance of getting success. If that slide deck says to you that the environment is too unprofessional for your advertising money, you were almost certainly going to fail to appear to Redditors anyway. Nobody benefits when advertisers fail, so letting advertisers self filter with a not very subtly unprofessional deck is a great idea.
cm2012 13y ago
I have noticed that for many new ads (not mine) you cant avoid cynical anti corporate comments.
rscale 13y ago
This is far more effective than the collateral I saw from them 2 or 3 years ago. Glad to see they're making a more serious attempt to monetize. I don't quite understand the constraints on the branded subreddits. That seems like it could be effective if done carefully and disastrous if done bluntly.
frakkingcylons 13y ago
It's too bad there isn't more substance in the slides. At this point, Reddit's current system of advertising works well for few other than those posting Amazon links with affiliate tags and a link-bait title. If you're going to even think of advertising on Reddit, it works best when you advertise on highly-relevant subreddits with either at least 50K subscribers or one with a very tight-knit community (like many of the city subreddits). Be straightforward and don't use much marketing fluff in the title otherwise you can expect to get some negative comments from hypercritical Redditors.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  Agreed, I think "goodwill" is incredibly important for advertisers to either (1) already have, or (2) convey strongly to the subreddit community.
  - frakkingcylons 13y ago
    To be fair, I should mention that it's only important if you're either (1) advertising with a very high bid for a reasonable amount of time or (2) promoting your product organically by posting it as a link/self-text post. For the first case, it's beneficial to have the appearance of good-intentions if comments are enabled. For the second case, it's critical because your exposure is determined based on your score from upvotes and downvotes.
- chaz 13y ago
  Large brand advertisers care a lot about the type of content their advertising will be shown against. For example, it's pretty unlikely that prestige brands like Clinique and Mercedes-Benz, or family-friendly brands like Clorox and Disney will be advertising on Reddit. Brands also care about what TV shows their ads are shown with, so even if the demo fits, the content needs to match, too. UGC is risky for brands because the content can be very NSFW or generally distateful. Sometimes outright hostile to brands. Reddit knows this, and has no pretense about it. So they're simply playing to their strengths. Some brands will embrace their unique audience, and some won't.
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salimmadjd 13y ago
Thanks for sharing but please clean the URL so it that doesn't credit a different site for referral URL (?ref=http://www.digiday.com/platforms/reddits-pitch-to-advertisers/ http://www.digiday.com/platforms/reddits-pitch-to-advertiser...) http://www.slideshare.net/MikeCole1/reddit-secret-planforworlddomination-21258371?ref=http://www.digiday.com/platforms/reddits-pitch-to-advertisers/ http://www.slideshare.net/MikeCole1/reddit-secret-planforwor...
getglue 13y ago
The problem with Reddit Ads is the average Reddit user leaves your site within the first couple of seconds.
- bdegman 13y ago
  I don't think this is the case. A large number of reddit users either use reddit enhancement suite or hover zoom, both if which allow you to view images without leaving the page. Also comments are a huge part of reddit which all takes place on the site.
- NameNickHN 13y ago
  This holds true with visitors from every source, unless it's highly targeted traffic.
- baby 13y ago
  Where did you get that? It says on the slide that the average time is 20 minutes.
jcampbell1 13y ago
I buy a decent about of ads ($xxK) for my own bootstrapped company, and Reddit offers communities that are ideal for us. However, as a Reddit user, I am completely terrified of running ads on Reddit. The problem with Reddit is that the users are taste makers of the internet, thus if they respond negatively to your marketing, you will be irrevocably fucked. If reddit users get tired of seeing your ad, then god help you because they will probably "1 star" you on the whole damn internet. I like Reddit, and I wish they had a way to do some sort of sponsorship. If I advertise on Reddit, it damn sure better come across as me supporting the site, not me annoying their users.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  I imagine the thing to do would be to test your ads on a very small subset of the site first, and judge the response.
  - jcampbell1 13y ago
    That is a valid suggestion, but remember one comment is all it takes to turn a self promotor into a borderline rapist in the eyes of the internet. https://www.google.com/search?q=woody+harrelson+reddit https://www.google.com/search?q=woody+harrelson+reddit
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      If you are familiar with the incident, you should see that particular comment was really just fuel in the greater fire. Harrelson did not just make a tiny blunder in one comment; he turned all of reddit against him with his repeated attempts to steer the AMA towards Rampart, and they proceeded to locate dirt on him. If you are unnerved by 'the Rampart incident', take comfort knowing that it has been 15 months, and no one has committed a blunder of that magnitude since (as evidenced by the fact that we still use it as the go-to example)
      - shitlord 13y ago
        > If you are unnerved by 'the Rampart incident', take comfort knowing that it has been 15 months, and no one has committed a blunder of that magnitude since Didn't you hear about the Morgan Freeman thing? It was a running joke for about 2 weeks (but it obviously did not affect Morgan Freeman in the least). It eventually died down, but I think the reason people dislike the Rampart thread so much was because it was one of the first of its kind (the archetype of bad AMAs, if you will).
archagon 13y ago
Uh, do the slides shrink with every click for anyone else?
- RyJones 13y ago
  Yes. Chrome on iOS
Ologn 13y ago
The main thing I advertise is my Android apps. When I advertise on places like Google or Twitter, I can target only people using an Android device. I can then further fine tune it to people who are searching for certain words (Google) or who are searching/tweeting certain words (Twitter). Reddit does not have this type of targeting by platform. I'm not sure why that is. It would probably take me about 24 hours to write an MVP script that would serve a different ad dependent on platforms. I would certainly at least try them out if they allowed targeting by platform like the major advertising networks do. And if I tried them out and I seemed to be getting a decent ROI, why wouldn't I keep using them?
kybernetyk 13y ago
Do they offer advertising for international advertisers yet? Because last time I checked you absolutely needed a US credit card. (I'm from Germany.)
- NameNickHN 13y ago
  They still offer advertising only to cardholders from the US, Canada and the UK. I really need to advertise on Reddit for a Reddit related website.
  - celticninja 13y ago
    Couldnt you get a US or UK resident to pay for you? You could reimburse the person with bitcoin.
    - NameNickHN 13y ago
      Would if I could but it's not like there are agencies that you can easily find via your favorite search engine.
  - jedberg 13y ago
    For now, yes. This is because outside of those countries the way you purchase an ad on reddit could be considered gambling. Once they switch to a pageview based system you'll be able to buy ads from lots of countries.
efesak 13y ago
Yeah but still ignoring international customers.
thenomad 13y ago
The biggest problem with Reddit advertising currently is the pricing. Even if you're advertising on a large subreddit - the only way to target your ads, really - it tends to work out rather expensive for what you're getting. Obviously some people are making it work, and it's probably cheaper on the really large subreddits. The reason for this is their odd "pay per day" system, which has a $30 minimum. However, they're moving to a CPM system soon, I'm told, which will make Reddit a very interesting ad opportunity.
iuguy 13y ago
We looked into Reddit a while back for advertising. The two main problems we encountered were that much of reddit is the wrong sort of traffic - people that don't convert, people that expect something for nothing and get upset (and vocal) when it doesn't happen and so on. In order to run a successful campaign on reddit it seems you need to engage with the community in the subreddits you're targeting, but engaging with that community can be done without advertising, so the benefit of advertising is somewhat diminished.
smackfu 13y ago
It seems much cheaper to just astroturf yourself in appropriate reddits. Or heck, make a compelling ad, like those Dove spots, and redditors will promote it for you.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Astroturfing makes you end up on /r/HailCorporate.
onlyup 13y ago
If you advertise on Reddit.. who are you advertising to? If I am in /r/sport (for example), does the advertiser know my gender, my prefered sports (through other subreddit subscriptions), my other interests, my age, my schedule, my social connections/network, my upvoting history, what sports stuff I am most likely to click, whether I like funny stuff, gossipy stuff, serious stuff, factually dense stuff? Reddit could build profiles on people or even ask for that information in the signup form but their users will not like that one bit. In addition I would be worried about the age demographic lowering dramatically (my opinion, not a fact) in recent years.
- jedberg 13y ago
  > Reddit could build profiles on people or even ask for that information in the signup form but their users will not like that one bit. They could, but by not doing that, I think it makes the users much more comfortable knowing that reddit specifically protects its users from that kind of intrusion. > In addition I would be worried about the age demographic lowering dramatically (my opinion, not a fact) in recent years. The median age actually goes up every year. The kids just get louder. :)
  - onlyup 13y ago
    Your second point is very interesting. I wonder why that is... and how you know if that info isn't collected?
cagenut 13y ago
$0.75 CPM, 2 impressions per page, 5B pageviews a month, and lets say 10% of inventory sold (which from personal/anecdotal experience seems generous)... $9M/year in revenue?
- hncommenter13 13y ago
  Interesting. Any chance you'd be willing to chat a bit about your personal/anecdotal experience with the 10% fill rate? If so, my email is in my profile (didn't see one in yours or on your blog, sorry).

169 points by muratmutlu 13y ago

ziko 13y ago

I thought it's a joke until 7th or 8th slide.

Slide 10 "Take over a subreddit" is interesting. "Lets you include brand messaging, customised layouts and background colors". I wonder how r/HailCorporate (a subreddit that outs PR companies that spam and manipulate reddit) would feel about their layout being changed.

hkmurakami 13y ago
At least personally, I react more negatively towards "manipulation" or "subliminal ads" more than outright, in your face ads (especially if done humorously or in good taste), so this "take over a subreddit" may be effective even towards the skeptics and naysayers.
nthitz 13y ago
Hmm. As far as I've seen these ads are just 350x250 and 300x100 blocks. I've never seen the layout or styling of a subreddit modified for an ad. And I imagine many of the communities being very upset if this did happen (Imagine EA branded /r/gaming). So that second bullet point seems confusing as I've never seen that and the two ads types they are selling don't seem to offer that capability. Has anyone ever seen the sort of ad that slide describes?? edit: I guess they do have that sort of functionality on reddit.tv but that doesn't seem to be what the slide deck is offering to me.
- avree 13y ago
  I'm a mod of /r/business, and we had an American Express takeover. It was much more than just two block ads. Full banner, etc. Didn't last that long and our users really didn't seem to mind (or notice.)
- jedberg 13y ago
  They usually ask the moderators if it is ok for that particular sponsor. Never had a mod say no though, since the sponsorship is usually pretty targeted and appropriate.
  - clicks 13y ago
    Have you ever had potential-sponsors request ownership of certain subreddits (for $, if it comes down to it)? I understand for big subreddits that wouldn't make sense (e.g., userbase would not take it kindly if r/funny was just bought (i.e. made ruling moderator of r/funny) one day by some media company). But I'm curious what would be the result of, say, the bicycling company Trek trying to become owners of the r/bicycles subreddit.
    - jedberg 13y ago
      "Ownership" of a reddit is not for sale, and never has been. The most you can do is get sponsorship rights for however long you want to pay for. However, a sponsor will never have control over the content (unless they manage to get someone on the moderator list I suppose, but they could do that regardless of sponsorship status).
bvdbijl 13y ago
I don't think you could actually change the layout, you would have to be moderator of that subreddit to do it

bowmessage 13y ago

I'm not quite sure the kitten with lightning coming out of its eyes is going to appeal to the major brand owners...

muratmutlu 13y ago
I quite like it for that reason
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look_lookatme 13y ago
In the post Old Spice Man world, plenty of major brands have embraced silly internet dadaism in aspects of their marketing.
nwhitehead 13y ago
Think of it this way, the advertisers that can't deal with kittens with lightning out of their eyes in the pitch deck are also likely the ones that would have a bad experience advertising on reddit and interacting with the community. By being authentic in the pitch deck, they deter clients that should be deterred, and attract clients they want to attract. Being authentic is a better, more efficient strategy.
NameNickHN 13y ago
I think it's a subtle way to weed all those companies out, that don't get reddit. I mean, if you don't understand the reference, how can you understand Reddit and its users?
- bowmessage 13y ago
  Sorry, what's the reference to? I'm a big reddit user and don't really get it :/

rpgmaker 13y ago

So can people now stop saying that twitter+facebook killed digg?

zipop 13y ago

I wish it wasn't the case but sadly reddit does not deliver for advertisers. Any good pitch deck would include testimonials and case studies. Those ads on slide 8 with thousands of comments are run many, many months if not longer to collect all those comments. The comments I've received on my Reddit ads are a litany of haters. Why advertise to people not willing to support their advertisers and spend money? Not in every case but I have to believe by and large this is true. I will say for their pitch deck, they are representing their cat loving constituent well. So there's that.

hkmurakami 13y ago
Out of curiosity, which subreddit was this? I mainly go to r/bicycling and I think a good natured ad in that subforum would be received quite positively for both small companies making a niche product or big name brands.
frakkingcylons 13y ago
I've had a similar experience. If you advertise to the Reddit (without specifying a subreddit), or one of the default subreddits, then expect to get a lot of flak in the comments unless you're advertising something that jives very well with Reddit's attitude on business "ethics". Most of the committed advertisers will also astroturf a couple of positive comments on different accounts to try to set the 'mood' for a comments page on their ad. Your mileage may vary with that, depends on how conspicuous/overt the comments are.
- cm2012 13y ago
  Spot on on all counts.
chris11 13y ago
I think reddit can deliver for marketing purposes. Tony, a marketing manager at Amazon, has spent a decent amount of time on reddit, most of it on r/gamedeals, and has generated a lot of sales and goodwill. In fact I think that Amazon has gained a reputation of having better sales than steam does. Unfortunately for reddit, he has done this by building relationships on the site not by buying advertising. That subreddit is anti-advertising, they even banned all affiliate links with the exception of three charities. So investing in reddit can bring results, but ads don't always work.

zacmartin 13y ago

I work in a media agency and would love to sell in Reddit to my clients but if you've ever tried to use it as an advertiser it's an extremely poor offering. Sadly, this sales deck does nothing to change my perception.

_lex 13y ago
What makes it a poor offering?
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  Additionally, what would make it a better offering for your industry?
  - josh2600 13y ago
    Ahem!!! Here are the problems with Reddit Ads off the top of my head: 1) either all reddit or one subreddit. 1a) no easy way to advertise on multiple subreddits 2) no way to be an agency. So painful to manage multiple accounts even with RES 3) no API 4) no support 5) limited ad units In short, I would love to advertise on r/SysAdmin but I can't justify spending $20 a day for <100 clicks. Give me the ability to advertise to all of Reddit or specific subreddits. Seriously, why can't I just advertise on a set of subreddits? They should give it to me for the same price as all of reddit. Why? Because that gives me control of my brand. I don't want to advertise on all of reddit because there are a lot of subreddits I don't want my brand associated with, but if I could bid across multiple subreddits I would use the self-service a lot more. Admittedly, I haven't looked at the reddit ad units in about a year, and I know they're looking for a softdev to build a new ad platform, but geez, can I get a real ad experience please? Reddit has so many pageviews, let me tap that!
    - zacmartin 13y ago
      And a better interface with enhanced reporting ability. Hoping for something like AdWords, ended up with amateur-hour.
    - 13y ago

staunch 13y ago

They're playing up the subreddits, but the truth is that there are very few truly popular subreddits (that aren't default ones or NSFW). If they could just figure out how to grow a bunch more subreddits they could make so much more money. Plus, it'd make the site a whole lot better for users if the site's traffic was spread out across more interesting topics.

hkmurakami 13y ago
Genuinely curious: at what point (numerically) would you consider a subreddit to be "popular" and how many subreddits currently fall into that category?
- frakkingcylons 13y ago
  I'd personally consider the tipping point around 50,000 subscribers. From my personal experience with organically promoting a website on a subreddit with ~60K subscribers, a #1 post on a subreddit of that size garners around 6k to 7k clicks in one day. Afterwards over the next 3 days or so, the link would get around 3k clicks.
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    Thanks! I frequent r/bicycling which has 80k+ subscribers, so it's good to know I have a feel for what the environment of a "popular" subreddit is like with respect to # of submissions, comments, etc.
  - TkTech 13y ago
    There's at least 234 subreddits with 50000+ subscribers[1] ...that's a fair number of highly targeted marketing channels. [1]: http://redditlist.com/ http://redditlist.com/
    - hkmurakami 13y ago
      I took a glance at the list and a lot of those subreddits aren't really suitable for advertisement targets. I'd guess that 2/3 of those 234 subreddits are addressable, so maybe 150 is a reasonable estimate.

QuantumGood 13y ago

"The Front Page of the Internet" is used as a frequent source by many profitable blogs. Reddit could just start their own, using itself as a source like so many others do.

searchergss 13y ago

Expected more from the Reddit deck than that. But, hey, that's an unreasonable expectation?

baby 13y ago
It does look unprofessional. I wonder if this is a tactic to show how easy they are to get in touch with? Like "easy advertising".
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  I think they do it that way in an attempt to filter the advertisers to only those who have a chance of getting success. If that slide deck says to you that the environment is too unprofessional for your advertising money, you were almost certainly going to fail to appear to Redditors anyway. Nobody benefits when advertisers fail, so letting advertisers self filter with a not very subtly unprofessional deck is a great idea.

cm2012 13y ago

I have noticed that for many new ads (not mine) you cant avoid cynical anti corporate comments.

rscale 13y ago

This is far more effective than the collateral I saw from them 2 or 3 years ago. Glad to see they're making a more serious attempt to monetize. I don't quite understand the constraints on the branded subreddits. That seems like it could be effective if done carefully and disastrous if done bluntly.

frakkingcylons 13y ago

It's too bad there isn't more substance in the slides. At this point, Reddit's current system of advertising works well for few other than those posting Amazon links with affiliate tags and a link-bait title. If you're going to even think of advertising on Reddit, it works best when you advertise on highly-relevant subreddits with either at least 50K subscribers or one with a very tight-knit community (like many of the city subreddits). Be straightforward and don't use much marketing fluff in the title otherwise you can expect to get some negative comments from hypercritical Redditors.

hkmurakami 13y ago
Agreed, I think "goodwill" is incredibly important for advertisers to either (1) already have, or (2) convey strongly to the subreddit community.
- frakkingcylons 13y ago
  To be fair, I should mention that it's only important if you're either (1) advertising with a very high bid for a reasonable amount of time or (2) promoting your product organically by posting it as a link/self-text post. For the first case, it's beneficial to have the appearance of good-intentions if comments are enabled. For the second case, it's critical because your exposure is determined based on your score from upvotes and downvotes.
chaz 13y ago
Large brand advertisers care a lot about the type of content their advertising will be shown against. For example, it's pretty unlikely that prestige brands like Clinique and Mercedes-Benz, or family-friendly brands like Clorox and Disney will be advertising on Reddit. Brands also care about what TV shows their ads are shown with, so even if the demo fits, the content needs to match, too. UGC is risky for brands because the content can be very NSFW or generally distateful. Sometimes outright hostile to brands. Reddit knows this, and has no pretense about it. So they're simply playing to their strengths. Some brands will embrace their unique audience, and some won't.

deleted 13y ago

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salimmadjd 13y ago

Thanks for sharing but please clean the URL so it that doesn't credit a different site for referral URL (?ref=http://www.digiday.com/platforms/reddits-pitch-to-advertisers/ http://www.digiday.com/platforms/reddits-pitch-to-advertiser...) http://www.slideshare.net/MikeCole1/reddit-secret-planforworlddomination-21258371?ref=http://www.digiday.com/platforms/reddits-pitch-to-advertisers/ http://www.slideshare.net/MikeCole1/reddit-secret-planforwor...

getglue 13y ago

The problem with Reddit Ads is the average Reddit user leaves your site within the first couple of seconds.

bdegman 13y ago
I don't think this is the case. A large number of reddit users either use reddit enhancement suite or hover zoom, both if which allow you to view images without leaving the page. Also comments are a huge part of reddit which all takes place on the site.
NameNickHN 13y ago
This holds true with visitors from every source, unless it's highly targeted traffic.
baby 13y ago
Where did you get that? It says on the slide that the average time is 20 minutes.

jcampbell1 13y ago

I buy a decent about of ads ($xxK) for my own bootstrapped company, and Reddit offers communities that are ideal for us. However, as a Reddit user, I am completely terrified of running ads on Reddit. The problem with Reddit is that the users are taste makers of the internet, thus if they respond negatively to your marketing, you will be irrevocably fucked. If reddit users get tired of seeing your ad, then god help you because they will probably "1 star" you on the whole damn internet. I like Reddit, and I wish they had a way to do some sort of sponsorship. If I advertise on Reddit, it damn sure better come across as me supporting the site, not me annoying their users.

sliverstorm 13y ago
I imagine the thing to do would be to test your ads on a very small subset of the site first, and judge the response.
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  That is a valid suggestion, but remember one comment is all it takes to turn a self promotor into a borderline rapist in the eyes of the internet. https://www.google.com/search?q=woody+harrelson+reddit https://www.google.com/search?q=woody+harrelson+reddit
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    If you are familiar with the incident, you should see that particular comment was really just fuel in the greater fire. Harrelson did not just make a tiny blunder in one comment; he turned all of reddit against him with his repeated attempts to steer the AMA towards Rampart, and they proceeded to locate dirt on him. If you are unnerved by 'the Rampart incident', take comfort knowing that it has been 15 months, and no one has committed a blunder of that magnitude since (as evidenced by the fact that we still use it as the go-to example)
    - shitlord 13y ago
      > If you are unnerved by 'the Rampart incident', take comfort knowing that it has been 15 months, and no one has committed a blunder of that magnitude since Didn't you hear about the Morgan Freeman thing? It was a running joke for about 2 weeks (but it obviously did not affect Morgan Freeman in the least). It eventually died down, but I think the reason people dislike the Rampart thread so much was because it was one of the first of its kind (the archetype of bad AMAs, if you will).

archagon 13y ago

Uh, do the slides shrink with every click for anyone else?

RyJones 13y ago
Yes. Chrome on iOS

Ologn 13y ago

The main thing I advertise is my Android apps. When I advertise on places like Google or Twitter, I can target only people using an Android device. I can then further fine tune it to people who are searching for certain words (Google) or who are searching/tweeting certain words (Twitter). Reddit does not have this type of targeting by platform. I'm not sure why that is. It would probably take me about 24 hours to write an MVP script that would serve a different ad dependent on platforms. I would certainly at least try them out if they allowed targeting by platform like the major advertising networks do. And if I tried them out and I seemed to be getting a decent ROI, why wouldn't I keep using them?

kybernetyk 13y ago

Do they offer advertising for international advertisers yet? Because last time I checked you absolutely needed a US credit card. (I'm from Germany.)

NameNickHN 13y ago
They still offer advertising only to cardholders from the US, Canada and the UK. I really need to advertise on Reddit for a Reddit related website.
- celticninja 13y ago
  Couldnt you get a US or UK resident to pay for you? You could reimburse the person with bitcoin.
  - NameNickHN 13y ago
    Would if I could but it's not like there are agencies that you can easily find via your favorite search engine.
- jedberg 13y ago
  For now, yes. This is because outside of those countries the way you purchase an ad on reddit could be considered gambling. Once they switch to a pageview based system you'll be able to buy ads from lots of countries.

efesak 13y ago

Yeah but still ignoring international customers.

thenomad 13y ago

The biggest problem with Reddit advertising currently is the pricing. Even if you're advertising on a large subreddit - the only way to target your ads, really - it tends to work out rather expensive for what you're getting. Obviously some people are making it work, and it's probably cheaper on the really large subreddits. The reason for this is their odd "pay per day" system, which has a $30 minimum. However, they're moving to a CPM system soon, I'm told, which will make Reddit a very interesting ad opportunity.

iuguy 13y ago

We looked into Reddit a while back for advertising. The two main problems we encountered were that much of reddit is the wrong sort of traffic - people that don't convert, people that expect something for nothing and get upset (and vocal) when it doesn't happen and so on. In order to run a successful campaign on reddit it seems you need to engage with the community in the subreddits you're targeting, but engaging with that community can be done without advertising, so the benefit of advertising is somewhat diminished.

smackfu 13y ago

It seems much cheaper to just astroturf yourself in appropriate reddits. Or heck, make a compelling ad, like those Dove spots, and redditors will promote it for you.

TeMPOraL 13y ago
Astroturfing makes you end up on /r/HailCorporate.

onlyup 13y ago

If you advertise on Reddit.. who are you advertising to? If I am in /r/sport (for example), does the advertiser know my gender, my prefered sports (through other subreddit subscriptions), my other interests, my age, my schedule, my social connections/network, my upvoting history, what sports stuff I am most likely to click, whether I like funny stuff, gossipy stuff, serious stuff, factually dense stuff? Reddit could build profiles on people or even ask for that information in the signup form but their users will not like that one bit. In addition I would be worried about the age demographic lowering dramatically (my opinion, not a fact) in recent years.

jedberg 13y ago
> Reddit could build profiles on people or even ask for that information in the signup form but their users will not like that one bit. They could, but by not doing that, I think it makes the users much more comfortable knowing that reddit specifically protects its users from that kind of intrusion. > In addition I would be worried about the age demographic lowering dramatically (my opinion, not a fact) in recent years. The median age actually goes up every year. The kids just get louder. :)
- onlyup 13y ago
  Your second point is very interesting. I wonder why that is... and how you know if that info isn't collected?

cagenut 13y ago

$0.75 CPM, 2 impressions per page, 5B pageviews a month, and lets say 10% of inventory sold (which from personal/anecdotal experience seems generous)... $9M/year in revenue?

hncommenter13 13y ago
Interesting. Any chance you'd be willing to chat a bit about your personal/anecdotal experience with the 10% fill rate? If so, my email is in my profile (didn't see one in yours or on your blog, sorry).