Reddit and Pinterest took to CES to position themselves as a respite to the negativity that often dominates social media. And as the chaos surrounding Twitter remained top-of-mind to attendees in Las Vegas last week, much of Reddit and Pinterest's conversations with brands centered on the notion that their platforms that promote positivity.

Speaking with Ad Age at the annual tech event, Pinterest’s chief revenue officer Bill Watkins explained that toxicity is no longer an unpreventable outcome of social media—it’s a blight that needs to be guarded against. Pinterest began taking these steps in 2018, when it banned political advertisements, and later in April 2022 when it banned climate misinformation. 

Twitter announced last week that it would resume political ads, ending a three-year ban that was originally triggered over concerns of propagating election misinformation. It was the latest move by Elon Musk-run Twitter that has given marketers reason to reconsider advertising on the platform. 

As it holds conversations with advertisers in 2023, Pinterest is leading with its perception that it is an oasis from toxicity—a move that Watkins said is working to steal share from competitors. Watkins, however, denied that this emphasis was a direct result of the situation at Twitter.

Pinterest has also amped up efforts to prove its value to advertisers—something that is now lacking at Twitter as a result of mass layoffs affecting its insights and analytics teams. At CES, Pinterest launched a clean room solution that will kick off with Albertson’s retail media network. The tool will seek to provide brand partners better analysis of their ads on the platform, and in a secure manner.

Reddit is also taking steps to woo advertisers with new mechanisms. The platform released a special report at CES that forecasts when certain trends will gain mainstream appeal. All of the report’s information was gleaned from user surveys, enabling Reddit to promote it to advertisers as a gold mine of audience attitude data.

The brain power of Reddit’s community itself has become a lighthearted selling point for the platform. Its party at CES had a “telling the future” theme, which hinges on the notion that Redditers have accurately predicted scores of trends and ideas long before they reached the mainstream. Many of these predictions, on topics from bitcoin to veganism, decorated the walls at the party. Even branded tarot cards and “communi-tea” leaves—a play on the divination practice of tasseography—were available.

The Reddit community also plays a major role in the platform’s brand safety proposition, Reddit’s chief marketer Roxy Young told Ad Age at CES. Each community has rules of its own and incentives for enforcing those rules. The result, at least for most subreddits, is fewer surprises for advertisers.

Avoiding TikTok-like baggage 

Meanwhile, TikTok has been the source of another headache to roil marketers planning their social media spend. The possibility of a nationwide ban by the U.S. government, while unlikely, is a major concern, especially given that the main issue has to do with access to data. Even if TikTok is allowed to stay, data-collecting practices on the platform could see significant changes. 

This makes data and measurement assurances from Pinterest and Reddit all the more welcoming to marketers. Pinterest, in particular, has made strides to expand other areas of its business into ad-measurable capabilities. Shopping, for example, can now be done entirely within the Pinterest app, allowing the platform to show brands that it is not merely driving inspiration to products, but also driving purchases.

An agency executive told Ad Age at CES that they are starting to see brands show more interest in publishers that carry zero baggage and pose zero safety concerns, in part because there’s no headache that comes with a collaboration. 

The executive named Snap and Pinterest among those that are relatively pristine in the eyes of marketers. Reddit contains a few more curve balls, they said, mostly having to do with the toxic nature of internet forums. But the platform is working hard to overcome those concerns, including its first U.S. TV ad last summer, which emphasized human connection and inclusivity.