Reddit, Inc. , the online discussion forum known for its quirky communities and viral
content, made its highly anticipated debut on the New York Stock Exchange today under the ticker RDDT. After years of operating losses, Reddit finally took the leap into the public markets, pricing its IPO at $34 per share and raising over $500 million.
For brands and chief marketing officers, Reddit's stock offering presents an intriguing new avenue to reach passionate, niche audiences.
As Steve Huffman, Reddit's CEO, stated to Ad Age, "On the business side, we're continuing to make progress with advertisers. I think [they] are appreciating the differentiation of Reddit. How we're different than social media, and the way they can find our customers is different than social media."
The "Recommendation Engine" for Brands At its core, Reddit bills itself as a "recommendation engine," where users seek and share advice on virtually any topic imaginable across over 100,000 active communities (called subreddits).
As Jen Wong, Reddit's COO, explained, "We have this trove of recommendations, and we are very clear that the way we drive performance is not through identity and profiles. We're going to do it through contextual advertising and be a leader in that."
This high-intent, community-driven approach contrasts with traditional social media's focus on individual user profiles and personalized ads. Instead, Reddit aims to leverage its wealth of conversations and recommendations to precisely target ads based on context and interest.
"If you are a specific company, like you're a golf cart business, and you just want golfers, for example, you can find your potential customer so specifically and narrowly because we have that community on Reddit," said Wong.
New Ad Formats and Opportunities To capitalize on this contextual approach, Reddit has been innovating its ad products. Last year, it launched "conversation placement" ads that appear above comments within relevant Reddit posts. It also rolled out keyword-based targeting and recently introduced product carousels within conversation ads.
Looking ahead, Huffman highlighted video and search advertising as major opportunities for Reddit. As the platform enhances its video player capabilities, it plans to introduce more video ad formats. Similarly, Reddit sees search ads as an untapped frontier, akin to strategies employed by Google and others.
"Search ads is a big opportunity for Reddit," Huffman told Ad Age, "but it's the same story there, making the search product on Reddit as amazing as possible and then we can start talking about putting ads on the search result pages."
Beyond advertising, Reddit is also exploring ways to generate revenue from the thriving e-commerce activity occurring across its communities. "We believe that over time, we can generate revenue based on the volume of commerce that is conducted on Reddit," the company stated in its IPO filings.
A Quirky Past, An Intriguing Future Despite its long history of losses and management turmoil, Reddit's IPO represents a critical milestone for the internet enterprise. By tapping into public markets, the company gains resources to double down on its distinct value proposition to advertisers – precise, contextual targeting within passionate communities.
As CMOs grapple with evolving privacy regulations and waning effectiveness of audience tracking, Reddit's approach offers a refreshing alternative anchored in authentic user interests and recommendations. While challenges undoubtedly lie ahead, Reddit's idiosyncratic journey has positioned it as an enticing new frontier for brands to explore.