This can make Reddit an easier platform for smaller brands with a more defined voice than corporate behemoths.

In Reddit’s Ask Me Anything sessions, Redditors will truly ask anything - demanding authenticity and quickly scorning brands who attempt to use the platform as a controlled PR experience or who want to brush product failure or bad brand behavior under the rug. “ provides this incredible opportunity to look at people’s passions and how they are expressing them in these contextual environments.”

“The best practice for brands entering Reddit is to lead with listening first,” said Cady. To find this community, Cady said, brands first have to listen. “For brands to find a way into that can feel complicated at first, but it’s actually remarkably easy when you identify the culture that your brand can be at home in.” “Reddit has a rich array of over 100,000 different communities each with their own culture,” said Cady.

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, where a brand can run a targeted ad for its latest product and then call it a day, success on Reddit requires a strong understanding of the rules, interests and culture of the subreddits that marketers hope to target. Will Cady, Reddit’s Head of Creative Strategy, suggested that the initial hesitation for brands may be the hurdle of culture shock. “We were truly amazed at how quickly consumers grabbed a hold of this idea, and how much sharing and collaborating was going on between them on Reddit and other social media platforms,” said Klein. However, with a bump in VC capital and a 90% increase in revenue year-over-year during the fourth quarter of 2020, brands are starting to jump on board. Despite having a younger user base than Facebook (58% of Reddit users are 18-34 compared to 40.7% of Facebook users ), as well as these same young users suggesting that they have stronger trust for Reddit recommendations than other social media sites, Reddit is thought to significantly trail behind Twitter, Google, and Facebook in advertising revenues.

While Reddit has 52 million daily active users whose passions span anything from stocks to skincare, brands and marketers alike have been scared to use it. “Our engagement on Reddit, while just one aspect of this multimedia campaign, played a huge role in our ability to directly communicate with customers in a real-time authentic way,” said Klein.

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