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After debuting on the stock market with a pop in March, Reddit chief marketing officer Roxy Young joined ADWEEK’s Social Media Week event in New York this week to bust some myths for advertisers still leery about appearing on the community-driven platform.
Young outlined the platform’s performance prowess and how the community appreciates conversations from brands.
“Our role is to help you connect with our communities,” said Young, adding that there are over 100,000 communities on Reddit. Here are the takeaways.
People love brands if they show up in the right way
People interacting in Reddit’s communities don’t hate ads, stressed Young: They want brands to show up in the right way.
In the cast iron cookware community—where some 5,000 people discuss products, care and seasoning their items—people wanted to hear more from Lodge Cast Iron, which has had an active Reddit account since 2014. That spurred the brand to participate more in the conversation, responding to comments and answering questions about its product line.
Some marketers could be wary of advertising to Reddit users given headlines about the revolt after unpopular API (application-programming interface) changes last summer.
Lodge is especially cognizant about treading carefully in this community, said Young, knowing that it’s a space for the community rather than a place to hawk its wares.
“You don’t walk into a dinner party and start talking about yourself,” Young said. “It’s about reading the room, reading the community and recognizing where your perspective as a expert adds value.”
Contextual is back
With the impending death of the third-party cookie in Chrome and marketers increasingly looking for alternatives to excessive audience targeting, contextual, one of the earliest forms of internet targeting, is becoming more relevant. Spending on Reddit is “built-in protection” thanks to its reliance on contextual targeting, said Young.
Reddit has 44 interest groups, which are further broken down into more granular categories. Marketers can identify their targeting criteria, and their ad will be shown to people engaged in those communities and in conversations associated with those categories, built from its first-party targeting platform.
