On Our Minds: The Untapped Potential of Reddit

Between Meta’s tech issues causing a global Facebook + Instagram outage earlier this month and the possibility of a national TikTok ban dominating headlines (and FYPs) last week, it got us thinking about the other places where people gather online to find community. The truth is, while marketers often stick to the core five platforms with mass scale, there are deep pockets of the internet full of passionate people connecting everyday around an infinite number of interests. Naturally, Reddit quickly entered the conversation. Since its founding in 2005, the popular network has become one of the top 20 websites visited in the world (Similarweb) and has grown to have over 73 million unique daily users powering 100 thousand unique communities with over 16 billion posts and comments. That’s scale and potential that’s hard to ignore. This month, they’ve made two exciting updates to their platform that will make it more tempting — and easier — than ever for brands to authentically connect with potential audiences.?

On the paid media front, Reddit launched a new advertising opportunity called Free-form Ads. The native ad unit mirrors the popular multimedia user post, the megathread, organically encouraging multiple users to come together, get the information they need, and deep-dive into the topic at hand. Early testing has shown that the new Free-form Ads outperform all other ad types in average click through rate by 28%.?

Organically, the site has launched Reddit Pro, a free toolkit for businesses and brands to engage and grow on the platform beyond advertising alone. This means businesses can now draft and schedule posts, as well as access to analytics to better understand performance, much like they have historically been able to do on other platforms. What makes Reddit’s dashboard unique is the inclusion of AI-powered insights which they say is “fueled by Reddit’s over 16 billion posts and comments, that surface the top communities, trending topics, and conversations on Reddit relevant to specific categories and, in some cases, specific brands” that can be used to “join or start conversations, connect with new and existing audiences, and inform the way they interact with and show up on the platform.”

Whether shows are on Reddit or not, our audiences are. Both the r/Broadway and r/musicals communities are in the top 1% and 2%, respectively, when ranked by size. They’re talking about reviews, sharing stage door photos, and asking questions like “If you could only see one of this season's new/upcoming musicals…” At minimum, we should be listening, because we can learn a lot from what our communities have to say. Even better, we’re adding to the communities and building stronger connections to our shows.?

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