Reddit launches new ad unit - Trending Takeover

Reddit is rolling out a new ad-unit called Trending Takeover placed in the most visited tabs of the platform: Search & Popular.

The shelf life of each campaign in this format is 24 hours; the Reddit Trending Takeover campaigns are aligned with the popular trends relevant throughout the day, giving advertisers an opportunity to promote their campaign besides the largest trends on the platform.

The platform previously known as 'the front page of the internet' has more than 430 million monthly active users, one-third of whom visit Reddit’s Popular feed every day.

Users can see the Trending Takeover ad unit in the second slot of the 'Trending today' tab on Reddit’s Popular feed, as well as the second slot of the Trending Today drop-down in Reddit’s Search tab.

Users that click on a Trending Takeover ad unit will land on a page featuring conversations, posts, and communities relating to handpicked advertiser keywords.

Advertisers will also be able to spotlight their trend on the Trending Takeover landing page to drive more engagement.

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The platform claims that partners such as Spotify and Adobe that used the unit during its beta phase saw an increase in surfaced conversations and a click-through rate two-times greater than the industry standard for social platforms, on average.

Brands can build awareness, drive a higher rate of views and reach potential target audiences through Reddit's 100,000+ communities that may already be interested in your brand as they search for related terms.

The ad unit is also directly competitive with Twitter's premium ad product called Promoted Trend Spotlight, the video slot that sits above trends in the Explore tab and Promoted Trends. Although Twitter's products are just placed in the Trending section and are not relevant to the real-time trends, unlike Reddit's Trending Takeover.

Reddit has not made and aggressive or assertive entrance in the Indian market yet. But its global growth looks promising as between 2017 and 2019 Reddit grew from 330 million monthly active users to 430 million.

In a 2019 report by Livemint where they touted if Reddit could become the next Facebook for millennials in India, they collated user reviews from fresh users in the country, all of them were positive about the platform and one mentioned she found the platform to be more "secure" than Facebook.

With Gen Z making up 26% of Reddit Users, it has been observed the younger generations are more attracted to the platform. We may see a potential growth of the platform in India, and early risers may be able to leverage it with effective advertisements.