Reddit is looking to connect advertisers to consumers while they are engaged in conversations with a new ad placement that sits within a conversation thread. 

Conversation Placements will sit under the original post and above the first comment. 

Reddit predominantly consists of these conversations, with Reddit users contributing to more than 350,000 conversations on the platform every day and spending about 42% of their time on the platform in a conversation thread, according to the company. 

Reddit ads have never before appeared in conversation threads. The publisher says that allowing advertisers to put ads here will expand the reach of their campaigns because users often land in conversation threads directly from internet searches and are unreachable from anywhere else on the platform. 

“It’s the latest example of our ads business continuing to meet the needs of advertisers,” Harold Klaje, Reddit’s global exec VP and president of advertising, said in the announcement. “We’ve invested a lot in the past year to evolve our product offering to ensure brands can best leverage the power and value of Reddit, and creating opportunities for advertisers to meaningfully engage with users is key to delivering on this.” 

This is the latest step in Reddit’s overhaul to make its platform more advertiser-friendly. Reddit has long been known for having prickly users who are not afraid to “downvote,” or dislike, content from brands they don’t find authentic. In the past, the site has given marketers pause when it comes to brand safety, turning on comments for their ads, and even if their brand will be well-received on Reddit at all.

To help with these concerns, in May, Reddit launched its own in-house creative agency, KarmaLab, to help brands create ads and campaigns that jive with the spirit and jargon of the site. It also stopped accepting programmatic ads in April, aiming to better control its ad supply and give brands more involvement.

Reddit’s ad business has been slow-going, reaching $100 million in total yearly revenue for the first time in 2019. The company has said it expects to hit $1 billion in ad revenue by 2023. For context, Twitter did $1 billion in ad revenue in the second quarter of 2021.

The new Conversation Placement, available on both mobile and desktop, will have the same targeting features as other Reddit ad products.  Advertisers can target based on interests, communities, keywords, and custom audiences.

Conversation placements can also use Oracle Data Cloud’s contextual intelligence software to make sure the placement follows brand safety rules. Reddit also notes that Conversation ads can be combined with other offerings like Home, Popular, or Community Feed placements. 

Reddit beta-tested the new placement with more than 600 advertisers for about a year, including HBO Max, Adobe, and Monday.com. In aggregate, beta test partners saw a 9% average increase in clickthrough rate, 10% higher downstream conversion rate, and 23% lower cost per click rate when using both Conversation Placement and Feed, according to the announcement.

“It’s vital that we have tools at our disposal that allow us to target based on passions like entertainment, sports, and gaming,” Laura Lee, HBO Max’s VP of acquisition and growth marketing, said in a statement. “Reddit’s Conversation Placement not only lets us target based on passion, but also allows us to join relevant conversations that are already happening. As a result, we have continued to not only meet but exceed our growth goals.”

Adobe has been using the Conversation Placement for an evergreen campaign to reach students since the fourth quarter of 2020 by targeting student and creator-related interest groups, like r/photoshopbattles, r/gradschool and r/applyingtocollege. Using Conversation along with in-feed creatives, Adobe saw an average increase in click through rate of 20% and a 25% decrease in cost per click compared to an in-feed post alone. 

Monday.com, a cloud-based work project management software, also used Conversation Placements for its campaigns aimed at driving sign-ups for product licenses.

“Our campaigns on Reddit are focused on reaching the maximum number of people to encourage quality sign ups for our product,” Sara Amati, Monday.com’s user acquisition manager, said in a statement. “Conversation Placement has driven our most efficient sign ups to-date, allowing us to target national news, technology, business and finance interest groups across the U.S., Canada, UK and Australia via static and video assets in a contextually relevant way.”