How to Target Your Best Audience with Reddit Advertising

Joe Martinez
Last Updated: November 24, 2021 | Social Media
HomeBlogHow to Target Your Best Audience with Reddit Advertising

There’s a pretty simple reason why you’d want to try Reddit advertising: Reddit is one of the most visited websites in the world.

With that much traffic, you need to be able to target your ideal audience. Thankfully, when you get started with Reddit advertising, you have a handful of ways to use the high-traffic platform to get in front of a target audience or focus on building your brand in a new way. While there may not be a ton of targeting options, Reddit advertising nonetheless offers a mix of new and familiar options to create effective marketing campaigns.

5 ways to find the perfect audience with Reddit advertising

If you’re experienced with PPC marketing, many of the ways you can target audiences with Reddit advertising will already be familiar to you. Let’s run through them.

Location targeting

Reddit location targeting

Reddit advertising’s main form of location targeting is by country. Advertisers in the United States can also narrow down the targeting to state and city level if need be. These same rules apply to the locations to exclude.

You should know that Reddit advertising is like every other ad platform we are familiar with: If you do not select a location to target, your ads will be eligible to show worldwide, depending on what other targeting options you select.

Interest targeting

Reddit interest targeting

This one is pretty straightforward: With Reddit advertising, you can target users who have recently interacted with certain categories of content. The important part of that last sentence is “recently interacted.” We’re not targeting users who are currently looking at these interests. This key phrase makes this targeting option pretty broad. Here is a list of the current Interests you can target with Reddit advertising:

Animals & Pets

  • Animals
  • Pets

Art & Design

  • Arts & Crafts
  • Design
  • Fine Art Photography
  • Interior & Landscape
  • Visuals

Automotive

  • Car Culture
  • Auto Type
  • Auto Repair

Business & Finance

  • Business
  • Personal Finance
  • Career Planning
  • Cryptocurrency

News & Education

  • College Education
  • National News
  • Science

Entertainment

  • Comics & Graphic Novels
  • Horror
  • Movies
  • Music & Audio
  • General Entertainment
  • Stories & Literature
  • Podcasts
  • Humor
  • Reddit Meta

Gaming

  • Video Gaming
  • eSports
  • PC Games
  • Tabletop Games

Style & Fashion

  • Fashion Trends
  • Beauty
  • Men’s Fashion
  • Women’s Fashion
  • Weddings

Food & Drink

  • Alcoholic Beverages
  • Cooking
  • Fast Food

Family & Relationships

  • Parenting
  • Dating
  • Marriage & Civil Unions
  • Life Advice

Healthy Living

  • Fitness & Exercise
  • Wellness
  • Outdoors

Sports

  • Baseball
  • Basketball
  • College Sports
  • Cycling
  • Track & Field
  • Soccer
  • Wrestling
  • Football
  • Hockey

Technology & Computing

  • Consumer Electronics
  • Computing
  • Virtual Reality
  • Programming

Television

  • Animation
  • Comedy
  • Drama
  • Reality
  • Science Fiction
  • Cordcutters

Travel

  • Travel Locations
  • Lifestyle

This is an exhaustive list, but just looking at it proves again how broad this targeting option is. Targeting “Travel Locations,” for instance, doesn’t let you to specify which travel locations—if you’re only after customers for your resort in Florida, you don’t want your ads to appear on pages about Mediterranean cruises or South American vacations. Interest targeting doesn’t allow advertisers to get that specific.

If you need to find a deeper level of targeting for your Reddit advertising campaigns, let’s move on to the next option.

Subreddit targeting

Subreddits are forum categories in the platform dedicated to specific topics or categories. Reddit advertisers have the option to target users who either have recently interacted with certain subreddits or are currently subscribed to a subreddit. It’s pretty easy to search for subreddits related to your business to see if any options show up by searching under the “Target Specific Communities” option.

subreddit targeting

If you’re not finding your desired Subreddit populating in the campaign options, it means there isn’t enough volume for that subreddit to be eligible for targeting.

Device targeting

By default, your Reddit ad groups are going to target all devices. Advertisers do, however, have the option to target either desktop only or mobile only if they choose.

Reddit device targeting

This will give you the option to break out your Reddit advertising campaigns or ad groups by device if you want to better control performance. If you are planning to run a campaign with the App Installs objective, however, you will only be able to target mobile users which should be any surprise to you.

Time of day targeting

Reddit advertisers can select which hours of the day within the days of the week their ads can be shown. All you have to do is click and drag to highlight a block of consistent hours, or you can click any square one-by-one to choose random sets of hours.

Reddit time of day targeting

Google Ads’ ad scheduling has the time zone set to whatever you chose when creating your account. Reddit advertising is different. The times you select will show your ads based on the ad viewer’s time zone. Keep that in mind when selecting your schedule.

Research Reddit advertising for yourself

Reddit advertising isn’t going to work for every brand out there. But with that much traffic, it’s worth trying. You’re going to have to dig into the targeting options yourself to see if your target audience could potentially be on the platform. The good news is that many of the Reddit targeting options are going to be familiar to an experienced PPC marketer. Just remember the subtle differences in how the targeting options work for Reddit advertising so your campaigns can launch with the best foot forward.

Meet The Author

Joe Martinez

Joe Martinez is the Co-Founder of the Paid Media Pros YouTube channel. He is a regular contributor to WordStream and Social Media Examiner. He has also written for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, PPC Hero, SEMrush, and more. He has hosted webinars for SEMrush, Unbounce, Quora, and Microsoft Ads. He regularly speaks at conferences and organizations such as SMX, HeroConf, Inbound, Pubcon, SMXL, and more. Finally, he was named a Top 25 Influential PPC Expert by PPC Hero in 2017-2021.

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