With Google’s recent agreement to show more Reddit content directly in search results, Reddit is experiencing a boost in visibility and user engagement. This is a unique advertising opportunity for B2B brands looking to reach niche, engaged audiences.
For B2B advertisers, this means Reddit is quickly becoming an even more valuable channel to reach engaged, niche audiences. However, navigating Reddit’s ad pricing, targeting options, and campaign settings can be complex, making it difficult to understand how much you should spend on LinkedIn ads to achieve the best results.
In this post, I’ll walk you through each of these and help you determine for yourself how much your Reddit ads might cost you for a given campaign drawing on our Reddit ads agency experience.
Key Takeaways
- $0.50 – $2 is the average cost per click.
- $1.50 – $10 is the average cost per 1000 impressions.
1 – How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Reddit?
I’ll get into the determining factors of your Reddit Ads cost next. But first, if you’re looking for a quick answer to how much Reddit Ads cost, the data shows about $0.50 to $2 per click.
As you know, every impactful ad campaign start off with a well-defined objective. Reddit ads are no different. You can use your campaign objective as the cornerstone to control your ad spend on Reddit. Think about the ad types, formats, optimization goals, bidding strategies, and pricing models.
Here’s a breakdown of common pricing you can expect on Reddit:
- Cost Per Click (CPC): The average CPC on Reddit falls between $0.50 and $2.00 making it a competitive option for advertisers comparing to other social media platform like LinkedIn. More niche subreddits often see higher CPCs due to limited ad space and audience specificity.
- Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM): CPM is used primarily for brand awareness campaigns and costs between $1.50 and $10, depending on your audience, competition and subreddit audience volume. Premium placements, like Reddit’s Front Page Takeover, command a higher CPM.
Costs can also fluctuate based on your bid, audience and creatives within Reddit’s auction system.
How does the Reddit ad auction work?
Reddit Ads is an auction-based advertising platform. The ads you see on Reddit are the result of a bidding process, known as an “ad auction”, which takes place when someone places a bid for a specific target audience. Factors like your bid, targeting choices, and ad creative determine your ad’s auction performance. Understanding the auction’s factors are key to maximizing ad performance while controlling costs.
2 – What determines your Reddit ad cost?
The cost of ads on Reddit depends on a lot of factors. Let’s review most important ones.
2.1 – Types of objectives
Your campaign will be priced per your campaign objective and the bid strategy you choose.
That means there are various marketing objectives, each with a different pricing model. These are the objectives Reddit lets you choose from:
| Objective | Description | Post types available | What you optimize and pay for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand awareness and reach | Increase awareness of your brand or product. | Free-form, Image, Video, Carousel | Optimize for: Impressions Pricing model: Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) |
| Traffic | Drive Reddit users to your website or post on Reddit. | Free-form, Image, Video, Carousel | Optimize for: Clicks Pricing model: Cost per click (CPC) |
| Conversions | Drive users to perform valuable actions on your website based on the conversion goal you set. | Image, Video, Carousel | Optimize for: Conversions Pricing model: Cost per click (CPC) |
| Video views | Increase views of your video on Reddit. | Video | Optimize for: Views Pricing model: Cost per view (CPV) |
| App installs | Drive users to install your iOS or Android mobile application. Only shown on mobile devices. | Image, Video, Carousel | Optimize for: App installs Pricing model: Cost per click (CPC) |
| Catalog sales (beta) | Drive sales to your products and services. Requires setting up a catalog. | Image, Video, Carousel | Optimize for: Catalog sales Pricing model: Cost per click (CPC) |
| Lead generation (beta) | Capture leads with forms on Reddit. | Image,Video | Optimize for: Clicks Pricing model: Cost per click (CPC) |
2.2 – LinkedIn Ad Pricing Models
LinkedIn has two main different ad pricing. Let’s look at them in detail and see which ads they’re appropriate for and how much these ads on LinkedIn cost.
- CPC (Cost-Per-Click): Ideal for driving traffic to your website, CPC campaigns ensure you pay only when users click on your ad. This model is suitable for most performance-focused campaigns, where user engagement is a priority.
- CPM (Cost-Per-1,000-Impressions): With CPM, you pay per 1,000 ad impressions. This model is best suited for brand awareness campaigns allowing advertisers to reach broad audiences. CPM pricing often works well for campaigns focused on growing brand visibility without requiring direct user action.
2.3 – Target audience
Not every audience you’re trying to reach costs the same. When you bid on ad placement, you’re competing with advertisers that target the same audience as you. So if you target an audience many others are targeting, the cost of your ads will go up. Who your audience is and your audience size will impact your ad spending. On average, it will cost more to put your ads in front of a narrower audience than a broad one. You can target an audience using Reddit communities, interest or keywords.
Expert Tip: Avoid using the “expand audience” feature or you’ll end up targeting users outside your audience criterias.
Another way to target an audience is by using the custom audiences.
Custom targeting
With custom audiences, you can use Pixel Retargeting, Reddit Engagement Retargeting, Customer Lists, and Third-Party Audience Segments to guide familiar faces further down the funnel.
2.4 – Ad format
Whether your ad is a video, an image, or a carousel is one thing but the different versions of each format are another. By checking your analytics, you will be able to tell which ad formats perform better than others and which variations of each format have better performance.
For example, you may find that short videos outperform long ones, and longer ad copy has a higher ROI. However, you will be able to know this only if your test all formats. This is the process to follow to improve your ad performance.
Expert tip: Majority of Reddit ads are shown to mobile devices so take that in an account when you create your ads. Prioritize clarity and short text on banners.
3 – How to control your Reddit ads cost
3.1 – Bid strategy
The first option for controlling Reddit ads costs will be with your bid strategy. There are going to be three options you can choose from for your campaigns—which are:
Lowest cost
Lowest cost bidding, is the default bid strategy on Reddit. If you don’t select any other bid strategy, Reddit will auction your ads using lowest Cost meaning that it will try to get the most results for your budget. This strategy is useful if you focus on conversion volume.
Cost cap
In this option, Reddit automatically adjusts your bid according to your target bid price. We recommend this option once you have created your full campaign, know what you’re doing and how to optimize. You should have an exact target goal in mind when using target cost, as it enables you to control how much you are spending towards your goal. At the same time, it allows you to optimize for performance.
Manual bid
This option allows you to set a price for each click, per mille impressions. This is the best option to choose as it provides an ideal control over how much you are spending on your campaign. Bid prices can vary a lot, and by using manual bidding you are defining how much you want to spend on each bid. Manual bidding gives you ample control over the CPC ( cost per clicks) of your campaign, meaning there’s little-to-no chance of overspending on your budget.
3.2 – Budget
The first option you have to impact your spending on Reddit is to control your budget.
Each time you create a campaign, you’ll have two options for budgeting:
- Set a daily budget
- Set a lifetime budget
As you can see in the image above, the default is a daily budget which is the best option for most advertisers because you can gradually increase the budget depending on the performance of your campaign. Lifetime budgets are designed for when you have a specific amount of money you want to spend to achieve a particular goal and you want to run your campaign for a limited time. This is appropriate for a short-term campaign like an event, special offer or webinar. Reddit will spend the entire budget but you might see fluctuations in spending from day to day.
3.3 – Audience Targeting
The more granular your targeting, the higher your cost might be. If your targeting criteria are very specific, you’re likely to face higher competition, which can increase costs. But don’t let that scare you away from precise targeting – just make sure you’re being picky for the right reasons and it fits what you’re trying to achieve. For instance If you have a mix of broad audiences (like interests groups, keywords and demographics) your cost will be cheaper than narrower audience segments (like existing customers or web visitors).
Expert Tip: The best way to reduce your Reddit advertising cost is by targeting specific subreddits. Maybe you’ll pay an higher CPC but at the end of the day you’ll reach more precisely your target audience than keywords or interests.
3.4 – Ad quality and format
Reddit is a mobile-first platform with 75% of users browsing on a mobile device. So building for mobile and maximizing mobile real estate is crucial to your campaign’s success.
Reddit offers a variety of ad formats tailored to different marketing goals. Choose the format that best aligns with your objectives:
Promoted Posts: Promoted Posts appear directly within users’ feeds and blend in with organic posts. They are labeled as “Promoted” but otherwise resemble native content, making them effective for engagement-focused and brand awareness campaigns.
Video Ads: Video ads play automatically in users’ feeds, a great means to capture attention through visual storytelling. These ads can spur more engagement and carry the branding message across more dynamically. Video ads support a number of different aspect ratios and lengths so you can work within each campaign goal with as much flexibility as it will take.
Carousel Ads: Carousel Ads let advertisers include multiple images or videos within a single ad unit— working natively as swipe-able, and these can be taken further by swiping through multiple images. Great for storytelling or surfacing multiple products, carousel ads can keep users engaged for a longer period.
Text Ads: As the name implies, text-based ads are basic, yet they’re effective in prompting discourse or encouraging engagement within specific subreddits. This would be more for those brands looking to start a conversation around their product or service.
Premium Takeovers: For brands needing extensive reach, Reddit offers high-impact placements such as the Front Page Takeover and Category Takeovers. These placements provide dominant visibility but come at higher CPM costs. In my opinion Premium Takeovers are most effective for brand launch events or time-sensitive promotions needing maximum exposure.
| Ad Format | Description | Media Specifications |
|---|---|---|
| Promoted Post | Standard in-feed ad that appears like regular user posts, supporting images or text. | Image: 1200 x 628 px recommended, max file size 20MB. Text: Headline up to 300. characters, additional text up to 40,000 characters. |
| Video Ads | Auto-play video ads in-feed, available for both mobile and desktop. | Resolution: Minimum 600 x 315 px (16:9) or 600 x 600 px (1:1). File Size: Up to 1GB. Length: Max 15 seconds recommended. Format: MP4 or MOV. |
| Carousel Ads | Allows multiple images or videos in a single ad unit, enabling swipe-through interaction. | Images: Each image 1200 x 628 px recommended. Videos: Same as Video Ads. Up to 6 slides, each with individual headline and URL. |
| Banner Ads | Display ads that appear at the top of Reddit feed pages, especially popular for takeovers. | Image Size: 1920 x 1080 px. File Type: JPG, PNG, or GIF. Max File Size: 500KB. |
| Text Ads | Simple text-based ads that promote discussions or gather engagement within subreddits. | Headline: 300 characters max. Text: Up to 40,000 characters, includes CTA button and URL. |
| Takeover Ads | High-visibility ads, including Top Banner and Category Takeovers, typically on desktop. | Banner Size: 1920 x 1080 px. Format: JPG, PNG, or GIF, often part of a premium ad package. Placement: Reddit homepage or targeted subreddit. |
Be creative and funny . Bring actual value- either laughs, information, discount or just “eyebleach” while they are scrolling. Gather ideas from other channels like Meta and TikTok, not just Reddit, be interesting, creative and funny. Check the subreddits that you wish to target and kinda steal their style about what they are posting. Aslo, Reddit Ads inspiration library is excellent for inspiration and discovering what others Reddit advertisers are doing.
By being inspired outside of this platform, you will bring something new and unexpected to the table. As a result, your ads are more likely to catch people’s attention, giving you an unfair advantage.
Expert Tip: Monitoring ad frequency is crucial for managing costs effectively. Ad frequency measures how often your ad gets displayed to the same user. High ad frequency can lead to ad fatigue, lowering engagemen and wasting budget on repetitive impressions.
If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS and Tech companies grow their MRR through LinkedIn advertising, contact us online or send us an email today at info@getuplead.com to speak with someone on our team.
