• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 16, 2022

Reddit’s partnership with WPP, announced today, comes with a multiyear commerce advisory agreement to assist brands in leveraging the purchase power of online communities. The long-term partnership will help brands with counseling and support.

The partnership with WPP taps the commerce and technology expertise across media agencies such as GroupM through quarterly advisory meetings. Teams will consult on Reddit’s commerce strategy, ensuring that it incorporates the latest insights and intelligence from across the WPP network.

Reddit Global Executive Vice President and President of Advertising Harold Klaje believes that while online communities are not new, they have emerged throughout the pandemic as an integral part of an ecommerce strategy.

Many brands working with WPP already work with Reddit to drive commerce through the company’s more than 100,000 communities. WPP was instrumental in last year’s launch of Reddit’s Product Council, which provides feedback about the company’s advertising product roadmap.

This new partnership will see Reddit and WPP continue to collaborate on client campaigns with a focus on lower-funnel education, strategy, and tactics to drive the strongest purchase outcomes.

WPP will receive a first look at Reddit’s commerce solutions with early access to alpha and beta tests so both companies can collaborate on joint products to work with shared clients. This arrangement is similar to partnerships formed with Omnicom Media Group in March 2021, Tinuiti in February 2022, and IPG Mediabrands in March 2022.  

The joint partnership builds on the company's existing relationship with GroupM and also includes research designed to test the effectiveness of future commerce products on Reddit, along with a training program through Reddit Ads Formula, which launched last year.

Reddit expects that it will continue to grow its Global Agency Development team, which recently appointed London-based Susanne Schmid.

Schmid joins from Facebook, where she was Regional Agency Lead. She will serve as Reddit’s Global Agency Lead for WPP.

Former Vice President, Global Head of Partnerships at Verizon Media John Baylon has also joined the team as Regional Agency Lead, EMEA, and will be responsible for servicing all holding companies across EMEA in the newly developed role.