Advertising on Reddit: Everything You Need to Know

Posted on November 13, 2025 in Blog

Even for experienced marketing teams, running ads on Reddit is a curveball. Reddit is social media for those who scoff at social media; Reddit users value community over commerce and guard their close-knit subreddits fiercely. Working with a Reddit advertising agency that knows how to speak to Reddit users and craft effective campaigns can help brands tap into this passionate, expert, and hilariously snarky community.

If you’re considering dipping a toe into marketing on Reddit, start with this guide, and check out our list of the best brands on Reddit for inspiration.

Disclaimer: Our agency recommends advertising on Reddit in conjunction with an organic Reddit marketing strategy and a generous paid media budget for other platforms.

What Is Reddit Pro?

About a year before going public in 2024, Reddit unveiled a new advertising platform to provide brands with a suite of business tools, including improved ad support and social listening metrics. Reddit Pro’s tools have since expanded to include:

Article insights to show which stories are being shared on the platform and how users are engaging with them
Automatic RSS feeds for publishers
Community recommendations to help brands discover the right place to post their content

These newer tools build on the more traditional business suite you’d find with Meta or X, which focus on visibility and engagement.

Reddit Pro Tools: The Basics

Keyword tracking: Brands track a set of keywords related to their brand, products, or services, to track how often these keywords are mentioned and the subreddits (think chat groups, but cooler) where they’re being discussed.
Post metrics: Monitor how many times other users viewed brand posts, the number of upvotes your brand has received, and your follower count.
Performance: A recap of your brand’s posts, and how many upvotes and comments they’ve received.

These reporting analytics will look familiar to most marketers, as will many of Reddit’s ad types and pricing models.

Ready to get started? Learn more about our Paid Media services.

How to Run Ads on Reddit

Brands are just a few clicks away from accessing Reddit Pro’s ad manager and starting a campaign. Before you invest your hard-earned marketing budget in a new platform, though, do your homework.

Define your audience
Establish a budget
Follow best practices
Test (and test again)

Define Your Audience – Who Uses Reddit?

Reddit user demographics data is extremely useful in determining if the platform is a good place to position your brand. Reddit is mostly male, mostly young, mostly educated, and mostly strong earners.

Reddit Demographics Breakdown

59.8% male
44% are between the ages of 18 and 29
31% of Redditors are between the ages of 30-49
Only 14% of Reddit users are over 50
58% of all Reddit users are based in the US
35% of Reddit users earn $75,000 per year or more
Reddit averages 804 million monthly visits from US users

Establish A Budget – How Much Do Reddit Ads Cost?

Reddit ad costs are similar to other PPC campaigns in the pricing structure. The minimum to advertise on Reddit is $5 a day. Advertisers can structure campaigns based on impressions, video views, or auction-style CPC.

Cost per mille (CPM) – Impressions are purchased on a CPM basis, or cost-per-mille. This charges a set amount based on every 1,000 impressions. Reddit’s CPM-based campaigns are typically less expensive than CPC and are a great way to learn more about the platform, your audience, and test ad creative.

Cost-per-view (CPV) – This video-focused metric tracks how long users watch a video ad.

Cost-per-click (CPC) – Auction-style ads start at $0.20 per bid. The total bid cost can change constantly based on the competitor’s budget. That dynamic pricing takes consistent management to remain cost-effective — one of the perks of working with a Reddit ad agency.

Overall, Reddit ad pricing is very comparable to that of other paid media platforms, such as Google Ads or Meta.

The average Reddit ad cost-per-click is $3.50 in the US, with $0.50 to $4 being a relatively useful range to expect for most brands and industries. The actual CPC for your ad campaigns could be substantially higher or lower, depending on the level of competition and other factors.

How Reddit Ads Work

Creating a campaign on the Reddit Ads dashboard begins by setting an objective for users. There are five default campaign objectives, and we’ve noted how they’re billed:

Brand Awareness and Reach – CPM
Traffic – CPC
Conversions – CPC
Video views – CPV
App installs/downloads – CPC

Speak the Lingo (and Know Your Audience)

One of the primary places that Reddit places ads is in subreddits. Subreddits are communities focused on particular topics. For example, r/marketing is a subreddit dedicated to anything and everything marketing with nearly 2 million members. For every large subreddit with millions of members, there are a dozen or more smaller subreddits dedicated to niche topics, such as digital marketing, social media marketing, marketing automation, and more.

Subreddits are noted or tagged with a r/, which means a Oneupweb ad to business leaders might be served to the r/ceo subreddit (which happens to have 12,500 members).

A Note on Brand Affiliates on Reddit

If you’re active on the platform, you’d probably have seen certain posts using brand affiliate tags. Reddit requires all redditors with any connection to a brand to disclose their relationship by using the brand affiliate tag. You should always add the brand affiliate whenever you’re acting on behalf of or in the interest of a brand, such as:

Replying to a post to answer a question about a brand, product, or service
Offering a product or service review of a brand you have a professional relationship with from your personal account
Recommending a product or service to another redditor offered by a brand you have a connection with

Brand affiliate tags serve the same function as Meta’s branded content tag – it’s all about maintaining a level of transparency that allows other users to make informed decisions.

More Reddit Best Practices

Redditors don’t like being sold to. More than any other platform, advertisers need to fit in, get to the point and be a little snarky too. Reddit might be the best place for a brand to experiment with a bit of self-deprecation, but most importantly, redditors value honesty and transparency.

Let’s make a deal – If your promotion offers a discount, say so loud and proud in both the copy and creative.
Test and test and test – We recommend at least five different creative pieces per ad group optimization. Reddit will do some of the work for you on Traffic and App Install campaigns, but you’ll need to experiment with new copy and creative variations on other campaign styles.
Fit in – Excellent copy treats redditors like humans, not ad targets. Before crafting your ads, spend ample time on the platform and on specific subreddits to understand how that community communicates.

Getting Started with Reddit Campaigns

Our PCC team is full of redditors who dedicate plenty of time to the platform. We support your Reddit campaigns with a fully integrated team of experts, including professional writers, brilliant graphic designers, and expert digital strategists. If you’re a medium or large business with a generous paid media budget, get in touch or call 231-922-9977 to learn more about our Reddit marketing services.