As a PPC agency, we’re always testing new platforms to see if there’s anything worth recommending to clients. Reddit gave us some free advertising credit, so we decided to put it to use and document the whole process.
We went in with low expectations, set up a campaign from scratch, and tracked everything through Google Analytics to see what actually happened when people clicked through.
The short answer: Reddit Ads were, in our experience, categorically the worst paid media channel we have ever tested. Here is exactly what happened and why.
How Do Reddit Ads Work?
Reddit’s advertising platform lets you promote content across the site’s communities, known as subreddits.
You can target users based on the subreddits they visit, their interests, or broader keyword targeting.
The setup process is a bit unusual compared to platforms like Google Ads or Meta. Every user who needs access to the ad account has to create their own Reddit profile first, then create their own ad account, and then get added to the main business ad account. It is a clunky process, but it works.
Once you are in, the Ads Manager offers a simple or advanced campaign setup. The simple workflow pulls in assets from your website automatically, which saves time but gives you limited control over how your creative looks.
How Much Do Reddit Ads Cost?
We spent £542 over the course of our test. Reddit reported 731 clicks from that spend, which works out to a cost per click of around £0.74. The reported click-through rate was 0.6%, which on paper looks reasonable.
The problem is not what Reddit charged us. The problem is what those clicks actually delivered, which we will get to shortly.
How To Set Up A Reddit Ads Campaign
We kept this deliberately simple. Rather than building out a complex campaign structure with multiple audiences, creatives, and targeting layers, we wanted to validate whether Reddit could deliver any meaningful traffic at all before investing more time.
Here is what we did:
- We used the simple campaign workflow, which pulled assets directly from our website.
- The automatically generated creative was bland, so we took screenshots of our case study results pages and used those as a carousel instead. Not our finest work, but enough to test whether the platform could deliver.
- We targeted the small business subreddit, which has an estimated 2.5 million users globally. That is not UK-specific, but it gave us broad enough reach to test without spending hours on audience research.
- We set-up UTM tracking parameters from the start (although we later found out we’d done so incorrectly so had to update them) so we could see exactly what happened in Google Analytics.
- We didn’t want to rely solely on Reddit’s own reporting. We also installed the Reddit pixel partway through the campaign to compare their pixel tracking against GA4.
What Reddit’s Ads Dashboard Reported
On the surface, the numbers looked decent:
- £542 total spend
- 731 reported clicks
- 0.6% click-through rate
- A healthy number of impressions
If you only looked at Reddit’s own dashboard, you would think the campaign had done a reasonable job of driving traffic.
The cost per click was not unreasonable, and the click-through rate was in line with what you might expect from a cold audience on a display-style platform.
What Google Analytics Actually Showed
This is where it fell apart.
For the same date range, Google Analytics recorded 18 sessions. Not 731. Eighteen.
Of those 18 sessions, only 10 were engaged sessions. We were able to isolate Reddit traffic clearly because each click carries a Reddit Click ID (rdt_cid) parameter in the landing page URL, which made it straightforward to filter even though we had an issue with our UTM tagging at the start of the campaign.
To put that in perspective, Reddit reported 731 clicks. Google Analytics tracked 18 actual sessions on our website.
Clicks shouldn’t equal sessions, but that is a 97.5% discrepancy.
Reddit’s Own Pixel Confirmed The Problem
We installed the Reddit pixel partway through the campaign using Google Tag Manager to see whether Reddit’s own tracking tool told a different story to GA4.
It did not.
Since the pixel was installed, Reddit’s dashboard reported 493 clicks. The Reddit pixel tracked 12 page views.
We do run cookie consent on our website, so users who reject cookies will not be tracked by the pixel. But even accounting for that, the gap between reported clicks and tracked page views is enormous compared to any other paid media platform we use.
So, Are Reddit Ads Worth It?
For lead generation as a service business, no. Not based on our experience.
Compared to any other paid media channel we put budget into, whether that is Google Ads, Meta, or even more niche platforms, Reddit delivered by far the worst results.
The reporting is wildly inflated compared to what actually happens on your website, and the traffic that does arrive shows minimal engagement.
If you are considering testing Reddit Ads, our advice would be to make sure you have proper UTM tracking and GA4 set up before you start. Do not rely on Reddit’s own click reporting to judge performance.
If you have budget to allocate, you will almost certainly get more from putting it into Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok or LinkedIn instead.
We tested it so you do not have to. If you need help with your paid media strategy or want to know which platforms will actually deliver results for your business, get in touch.
