Visit Saudi has started working with Reddit, the social media platform.
In an interview with Campaign Middle East, Reddit’s Vice President of Mid-Market and SMB sales, Stephen Riad, said Visit Saudi had made its “first foray into Reddit, via a small test campaign for Riyadh Season.”
The tourist board joins a growing list of advertisers turning to Reddit, which describes itself as “a community of communities”.
Content on the platform is user-generated covering news, entertainment, culture and knowledge-sharing. It has more than 100,000 communities.
Riad said Reddit users differ from other social media platforms and, as a result, are attracting more brands to get involved.
“Users come to seek out information rather than aimlessly scrolling through it. They come with an active mindset. They come to learn from peers and subject-matter experts and brands and businesses.
“They really trust that information. That often translates into driving real-world decision making.”
Reddit says this appeals to advertisers, who are turning to the platform to find and engage with potential customers.
“They have the benefit of being part of that conversation, showing up where its contextually relevant.
“Users are intent-led, intent-driven and interest-led. That positions us well across the advertisers that we work with.”
Reddit has done a lot of work on keyword suggestions, using machine learning and AI to give suggestions to advertisers to expand their lists.
“Reddit is a platform where users love to engage, they love to share opinions. So showing up as a brand or company, we often say to first-time advertisers be sure to be authentic.”
His tips include:
Take the step of joining a community that aligns to your brand
Be real and honest
Don’t be afraid to be a little bit vulnerable
Oatly campaign
One of Reddit’s advertising success stories was for Oatly, the Swedish dairy alternative.
“They came to us saying ‘we are open to being honest and authentic. We want feedback’. It kind of works really well for Reddit.”
Karma Labs, Reddit’s internal creative agency, created over 100 tongue-in-cheek text ads designed to bring together communities and spark discussions on Oatly’s advertising.
“They invited both positive and negative feedback, which is not often what all brands do as they are a bit afraid of engagement.
“It created an opportunity for them to address inaccuracies and criticisms about their products and talk to people who were passionate about dairy free products. They continue to engage with these communities.”
Conversation placement
Reddit users contribute to more than 350,000 conversations on the platform every day.
Its Conversation Placement tool allows brands to reach users in targeted conversations where they are most engaged in their passions and interests.
Conversation Placement sits within a conversation thread, under the original post, and above the first comment, giving advertisers the opportunity to scale their reach beyond Reddit feeds and connect with users where they are “the most leaned-in”.
