Reddit Ads: The Ultimate Guide To App Install Ads

Reddit is growing fast, and many engaged gamers are on it. Users are actively discussing their favorite games and researching new titles to play at this very moment. These are potential customers you can target with organic posts and Reddit Ads. 

Reddit provides a customized browsing experience by allowing users to curate their content based on their interests. This presents you with a great opportunity for Reddit advertising since you can structure your campaign to target users with specific interests and browsing habits. The social network has a predominantly male audience between the age of 18 and 29 years, but this doesn’t mean they are the only users here! The users also tend to be college-educated, making Reddit the perfect platform to connect with high-earning individuals likely to spend money on your game. 

This article discusses how to enhance your mobile game marketing efforts by publishing app install ads on Reddit. Let’s get started!

How Reddit's ads differ from other ad platforms

While there are many forms of gaming social media, Reddit is a unique social network that offers great benefits that cannot be found elsewhere. Advertising on the platform is very cheap, with businesses able to access a highly-engaged audience with wildly specific interests. These features make Reddit an attractive platform for game marketers looking for an effective way to reach players. 

Here's how Reddit is different from other platforms and why it should be one of the top platforms you consider for your mobile game marketing. 

More focus on native ad experience

Reddit places more emphasis on native advertising to ensure paid ads match the look and feel of other content on the platform. The ad formats available to marketers are non-disruptive and expose viewers to targeted advertising content without disturbing their browsing experience. By making paid advertising look like regular content, users may not realize they are consuming paid content and interact with the ad as they would other posts published on the platform. This greatly boosts ad engagement and helps marketers reach as many people as possible with their content. 

Highly engaged users

Reddit is the largest online forum in the world. It was specifically built for discussing issues and sharing thoughts and opinions. Reddit members are very active and engage the posts that interest them or fall in their areas of specialty. They leave comments on posts that need user input and share interesting content on their user feed. They also upvote and downvote posts to express their feelings on the issues raised on the platform. 

With their keen desire to support the content published on the platform, Reddit’s highly engaged users are a dream come true for any game marketer. The users will engage your paid posts to boost engagement rates and provide you with valuable feedback to further improve your marketing. While users in other platforms tend to ignore paid advertisements, Reddit users embrace them as long as they are relevant to them. Work with a game marketing agency to design effective Reddit ads for games. 

Better trust in the platform

There is a lot of trust on Reddit compared to other platforms. Users follow the technical rules of the subreddits, thus keeping the engagements civilized and authentic. And if that is not enough, Redditors can easily spot fake users from far and call them out for trying to deceive other members. All these issues help create a trusting environment for business growth. With the right game marketing strategy, you will earn the trust of your ideal users and get them to download and play your game. 

Different targeting

Most social media for gamers have their ad targeting limited to aspects like interest and regions. Reddit offers a unique targeting experience by letting marketers target niche communities – subreddits – that are often tied to specific interests. Each subreddit attracts people with particular interests. This is where you will find very specific and engaged audiences that are ideal targets for your video game marketing. 

Figure 1: Oculus ad targeted to the r/NintendoSwitch subreddit. Source: Reddit

For example, the oculus ad above was targeting the r/NintendoSwitch subreddit. When an ad is shown to the right people, it’s more effective in driving high-quality traffic, conversions, and profits. 

How to set up a Reddit Ads campaign

If you would like to publish Reddit Ads for your game, take time to read Reddit’s advertising policy. It covers the editorial requirements as well as the prohibited and restricted ad formats. Reddit demands that paid ads be functional, accurate, and legible. Otherwise, your ads will not be approved for publishing. That said, here’s how to create ads on the platform. 

Step #1: Set up your Reddit Ad account

To run an ad campaign on Reddit, you first of all need to create an ad account. The process is very straightforward and you will be ready to get started as soon as you provide all the information. If you already have a Reddit account, you just need to sign in via ads.reddit.com. When you log in, you will notice that some of your details have already been filled in and you just have to provide the missing information. 

Once you fill in all the required information, click Sign Up and you will be able to access your ad campaign dashboard. 

Step #2: Plan your ad campaign

With your ad account set, you can now start preparing your first campaign. But before you do that, take time to plan the details of your campaign. Familiarize yourself with the types of ads you can run and gather all the necessary assets. 

For your Reddit ad campaign, the campaign objectives you can choose include:

• Brand Awareness & Reach – Increase awareness for your brand/product. Pay for cost per thousand impressions. 
• Traffic – Drive traffic to a specific page on your site. Pay for cost per click. 
• Conversions – Drive valuable actions on your website such as sales or email campaign sign-ups. Pay for cost per click. 
• Video views – Boost views for your video. Pay for cost per view. 
• App Installs – Generate more installs for your app. 

Figure 2: Campaign objectives. Source: Reddit Ads

Since your objective is to drive installs for your game, select App Installs as your campaign objective. When it comes to ad formats, Reddit allows marketers to run text, video, link, and carousel ads. The ad type will be determined by your campaign goals and audience. 

Once you have figured out the ad type, gather the following assets:

• Ad copy
• Visual elements (images or videos)
• Destination links
• Ad trackers
• Payment methods

Step #3: Create your campaign

Once you’ve sorted everything, you can now start creating your ad. Enter the name of your ad campaign and select your funding instrument. You will then be taken to a page where you will create an ad group. Segmenting your campaigns is important because it makes them more effective by letting you target specific audiences interested in what you are offering. 

Figure 3: Creating an ad group. Source: Reddit Ads

To create an ad group, choose a name for the group and select your audience type. Choose the interests and communities to target, the locations you'd like to reach, and the devices to target. Reddit also allows you to exclude locales and communities if needed. 

Next, you will have to set the placement and budget for your ad. Determine where your ads will be displayed. You can have them displayed in the Feed, Conversations, or both placements. For your budget, set how much you want to spend for your campaign. You can set a daily budget of the amount you want to pay each day or a lifetime budget for a specified period. 

The last step is to set your ad schedule. This is the timeframe in which your ad will be live on Reddit. Choose the times when your target audience is most likely to be online. 

Step #4: Create your Reddit Ad

The next step is to create the ad that will be published on the platform. Reddit allows you to create an ad from your existing posts or build one from scratch. Click the Duplicate button to make an existing post your ad or New Post to create one from scratch. When creating an ad from scratch, a box will appear prompting you to choose one of the available ad types: image, video, text, or carousel. Choose your desired option and fill in the necessary details as required. 

Step #5: Create your Reddit Ad

One of the most important things you need to do before kicking off your app install campaign is to integrate supported measurement parameters to measure and optimize your campaign objective. When running Reddit Ads for Android apps you can configure one of Reddit’s Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) to track mobile app conversion on your dashboard. Some of the MMPs you can consider for this exercise include Adjust, AppsFlyer, Kochava, Singular, and Branch. 

With Reddit ads for iOS apps, you should integrate directly with SKAdNetwork or through the MMP for iOS 14+ targeted campaigns. The iOS 14 update requires apps to get explicit permission from users to track and use their data. Integrating with SKAdNetwork allows for full install attribution coverage, even for opt-out users. 

Learn more about the iOS 14 update and how it will affect your game marketing here: What is an Apple IDFA? And How Apple’s iOS 14 Update Will Impact Your Marketing. 

Paid advertising for game devs

Organic marketing is great, but it won’t take you all the way to game marketing success! Don’t be afraid to invest in paid advertising, as it can help you generate the reach and engagement you need. Still not convinced? Check out The Complete Paid Marketing Guide for Video Games!

Reddit Ads for games are a very useful asset for developers to reach their target users. The app is popular as gamer social media platform, and by targeting interests and subreddits, you can tap into a whole new stream of players for your game. 

Game Marketing Genie has vast experience when it comes to serving paid advertising and has what it takes to get your game in front of your exact audience. We will help you design the best ad content to help you market yourself effectively with an emphasis on authenticity. 

Get in touch to book a consultation session with one of our experts.