Brief:

• S.C. Johnson's Method brand of eco-friendly cleaning products was among the 15 companies that tested Reddit's "trending takeover" ad format, which the online discussion platform formally unveiled this week. The format lets brands place ads in a prominent section of Reddit's website and app, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
• Method's tending takeover activation, which included a how-to video starring interior stylist Hilton Carter, generated a completion rate four times higher than the rate for a promoted post on Reddit. Method's "There's a Good Inside" campaign also saw a click-through rate (CTR) two times greater than the industry standard for social platforms by targeting Reddit communities such as r/houseplants, r/gardening and r/malelivingspace, per its announcement.
• Trending takeover ads appear for 24 hours in the "Trending Today" section of Reddit's Search tab and Popular tab that helps users see trending topics. The format points to a sponsored landing page that can handle transactions, including direct orders with a "Shop Now" button, per Reddit.

Insight:

Method's positive results from its test of Reddit's trending takeover ad format indicate that the online discussion site can help to reach a broad audience in addition to self-selecting niche groups based on their interests. Reddit has more than 430 million monthly active users (MAUs) who participate in its 100,000 online discussion groups, while its Search and Popular tabs generate significant traffic among users who want to discover the latest buzz. More than one-third of Reddit's users look at the Popular feed each day, making it a centralized hub for engaging audiences, per Reddit.

For the online platform, the trending takeover ad format positions it to compete more directly with Twitter, the social network with 152 million daily users. Twitter also has tabs to help users see the latest trending topics and breaking news, and in January expanded its "promoted trend spotlight" takeover ads to a global audience. Disney promoted the launch of its Disney+ streaming video platform with a promoted trend spotlight ad to reach a broad audience, Trevor Kelley, VP of digital marketing at Disney+, said in the company blog post.

Reddit's new ad format follows past efforts to make the platform more brand-safe while also respecting its users' demands to freely express themselves. The company last year announced a collaboration with Oracle Data Cloud to provide brand safety controls among its discussion groups. Reddit also introduced an ad performance bundle that included campaign objectives such as app installs, reach, video view, traffic and conversions associated with bid types such as CPM, cost-per-view and cost-per-click.