Back in 2014, I ran ads for inkmat on reddit. The ads looked kind of cheap for getting the word out about the service and I figures why not give it a try. The minimum amount was only $5. What’s the worst that could happen? I lose Rs. 300 and not get a single visitor.
So, I gave reddit a try. I bought ads worth $5. Reddit has in the near past released a new feature to its ad system : Targeting by demographics.
For those who don’t know what it meant, Targeting by demographics allowed me to show my ad and be charged only when an Indian is served one ad (or more generally, a member of my target demography).
This was the perfect thing as now I could target my ads to India.
So this is exactly what I did.
Buying ads on reddit is super easy. You visit the advertising page, click on create ad, enter your details and make the payment. Unfortunately, your ad cannot start right at that moment and takes two days to start.
Before the ad starts, a reddit employee needs to approve it. I have never had any problems with it (I’ve ran affiliate ads on reddit before) and this is takes ~10-12 hrs because they are sleeping when we are working in India.
So that was it, my ads were serving from 14th of May and would be served till 16th of May or when I run out of ad inventory.
This is what my reddit ad looked like.
The pricing of reddit is very straightforward. $0.75 CPM (Edit: Now it’s $1 CPM). This means, you have to pay 75 cents for 1000 ad impressions. It’s up to users to click on it or not. You pay for bringing it in front of their eyes.
The ad started off on 14th May and finished on 16th May. The summary of the ads :-
| date | impressions | clicks | click-through (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-05-14 00:00 -0500 | 33 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 01:00 -0500 | 106 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 02:00 -0500 | 130 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 03:00 -0500 | 137 | 1 | 0.73 | |
| 2014-05-14 04:00 -0500 | 140 | 1 | 0.714 | |
| 2014-05-14 05:00 -0500 | 133 | 1 | 0.752 | |
| 2014-05-14 06:00 -0500 | 140 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 07:00 -0500 | 109 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 08:00 -0500 | 104 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 09:00 -0500 | 86 | 1 | 1.163 | |
| 2014-05-14 10:00 -0500 | 152 | 1 | 0.658 | |
| 2014-05-14 11:00 -0500 | 152 | 1 | 0.658 | |
| 2014-05-14 12:00 -0500 | 175 | 1 | 0.571 | |
| 2014-05-14 13:00 -0500 | 120 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 14:00 -0500 | 73 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 15:00 -0500 | 63 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 16:00 -0500 | 42 | 1 | 2.381 | |
| 2014-05-14 17:00 -0500 | 18 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 18:00 -0500 | 18 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 19:00 -0500 | 27 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 20:00 -0500 | 45 | 1 | 2.222 | |
| 2014-05-14 21:00 -0500 | 54 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 22:00 -0500 | 80 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-14 23:00 -0500 | 105 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 00:00 -0500 | 459 | 2 | 0.436 | |
| 2014-05-15 01:00 -0500 | 457 | 4 | 0.875 | |
| 2014-05-15 02:00 -0500 | 465 | 3 | 0.645 | |
| 2014-05-15 03:00 -0500 | 435 | 1 | 0.23 | |
| 2014-05-15 04:00 -0500 | 539 | 6 | 1.113 | |
| 2014-05-15 05:00 -0500 | 271 | 3 | 1.107 | |
| 2014-05-15 06:00 -0500 | 238 | 1 | 0.42 | |
| 2014-05-15 07:00 -0500 | 178 | 2 | 1.124 | |
| 2014-05-15 08:00 -0500 | 145 | 1 | 0.69 | |
| 2014-05-15 09:00 -0500 | 86 | 1 | 1.163 | |
| 2014-05-15 10:00 -0500 | 107 | 1 | 0.935 | |
| 2014-05-15 11:00 -0500 | 103 | 1 | 0.971 | |
| 2014-05-15 12:00 -0500 | 99 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 13:00 -0500 | 100 | 2 | 2 | |
| 2014-05-15 14:00 -0500 | 78 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 15:00 -0500 | 86 | 1 | 1.163 | |
| 2014-05-15 16:00 -0500 | 48 | 1 | 2.083 | |
| 2014-05-15 17:00 -0500 | 21 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 18:00 -0500 | 33 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 19:00 -0500 | 60 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 20:00 -0500 | 216 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 21:00 -0500 | 222 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 22:00 -0500 | 258 | 0 | 0 | |
| 2014-05-15 23:00 -0500 | 298 | 4 | 1.342 | |
| total | 7,244 | 43 | 0.594% |
I should have gotten 6,666 impressions but for some reason had gotten 7,244 impressions.
These ads bought in 43 people to visit the site, but it was hard to track them. Many of them were using blockers so Google Analytics didn’t report all the users.
I was able to get 3 orders off these ads. Pretty high conversion rate but we should take these with a pinch of salt because the number of people coming were themselves very low.
I might try reddit ads again if I find some new insight about better engagement. Something I’d like to try will be targeting /r/India instead of frontpage ads targeted demographically.
Thanks for reading till the end. Let me know if you’ve ever tried reddit ads and what was their outcome in the comments below or tweet out to me @shobhitic.