Reddit Has Added a New Promotional Option Within Post Reply Threads

With the addition of a new ‘Conversation Placement' ad option, Reddit continues to expand its marketing potential for brands, allowing bands to sell their wares within its highly engaged post comment threads. Conversation Placement, as seen below, allows businesses to place their advertisements within appropriate reply chains, beneath the original article and above the initial remark. A prominent CTA button is also included in the choice to encourage reaction.

Every day, the most engaged interactions take place across a wide variety of passions and interests in Reddit's community chats. Conversation Placement enables advertisers to interact with their audiences as these conversations occur, and it works in tandem with Reddit's in-feed advertising to reach even more users where they're most interested. Indeed, Reddit claims that over 350,000 conversations take place on the platform every day and that on average, Reddit users spend 42 percent of their time in the app in comment threads.

The most important question is how Reddit users will react, and whether it will be a welcoming and useful placement choice for advertisers. According to Reddit, Conversation Placement campaigns have had "substantial success" in beta testing with over 600 partners across various sectors, verticals, and campaign objectives.

When employing both Conversation placement and Feed, beta test partners observed a 9 percent average improvement in clickthrough rate (CTR), a 10% higher downstream conversion rate (CVR), and a 23% lower Cost Per Click (CPC) rate.

Brands have been able to enhance their total reach on the site by up to 20% when Conversation Placement is utilized in a larger ad approach, in conjunction with standard Feed advertisements, according to Reddit. That makes sense, given the potential for tandem exposure, but you can see how that technology may help you get your brand and offerings in front of the proper consumers, based on specific subreddits and the most active discussions in each.

Perhaps this will assist generate greater ad reaction merely by association, and there is certainly evidence to suggest that sheer mention and exposure volume can drive better response.

Some Redditors will undoubtedly be offended by advertisements in comment streams, but most are now more accepting of ads, given the greater placement possibilities available across the web and the widespread awareness that ads are necessary to pay for the services they use.

It could be worth a shot — Reddit's Conversation Placement feature is now available to all Reddit advertisers.