Reddit Hopes to Scale Advertising Efforts with New Partnerships

Reddit and Omnicom made it official. Or more official. Reddit is hoping that a deeper relationship with the media conglomerate will warm up brands wary of its freewheeling nature.

r/Brandsafety

Despite its 52 million daily active users (DAUs), Reddit’s long had to do the safety dance to try and convince brands that it's a suitable place to spend. Recent headlines haven’t exactly helped:

• r/The_Donald was an infamously toxic subreddit dedicated to the former president that was banned in June 2020.
• r/donaldtrump was also canned after the January 8 insurrection.
• Activity on r/WallStreetBets resulted in a meme uprising and a congressional hearing.

Reddit’s ad business is finally taking off, but it remains pretty small: In 2020, its US ad revenue rose nearly 20% to $141.8 million, and eMarketer expects it to hit $212+ million this year. For context, Snapchat and Twitter are projected to hit $1.34 billion and $1.87 billion, respectively.

The flipside: There’s a reason Reddit was the perfect platform to (briefly) take over the US economy. It has obsessive, niche communities—and that is both a benefit and a liability. The Omnicom partnership could help convince brands that one outweighs the other.