• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 31, 2023

Reddit on Thursday is releasing contextual targeting capabilities and keyword suggestions. The tools are powered by machine learning (ML) and tap into 100,000 active communities on Reddit covering a vast range of topics.

Reddit’s Executive Vice President of Business Marketing and Growth Jim Squires believes that the promise and potential of artificial intelligence (AI), while exciting, has also elevated the value of real human interactions and interests for both consumers and marketers.

“As we enter a new chapter in our industry and evolve beyond traditional signals, interest-based, contextually relevant targeting will be the most effective way to reach people where they are most engaged,” he said. 

As changes in the use of signals and the increased focus on privacy continue to impact the ways advertisers reach audiences, Reddit’s contextual and interest-based tools will leverage the platform’s corpus of text. 

Keyword Suggestions, a machine-learning solution, allows advertisers to expand their keyword lists by recommending relevant and targetable keywords. It filters and removes keywords that are not brand-suitable.

Available through the Reddit Ads Manager, Keyword Suggestions removes the guesswork from targeting -- ranking each suggestion by monthly views on Reddit -- and opens an expanded list of relevant targeting possibilities to increase the reach and efficiency of campaigns. 

Keyword Suggestions are powered by advanced machine learning and natural language processing to drive the most relevant suggestions.

This technology takes the original context of each keyword into consideration, so only those in a brand-safe and suitable environment are served to advertisers. This means that in theory, ML pulls from the Reddit posts and conversations that best match each advertiser’s specific needs and allows advertisers to show the most relevant ads to the Reddit users who will be most interested in them.

The tools are an extension of services announced in June such as Contextual Keywords Targeting, a feature that places brands alongside specified keywords as they appear across Reddit community discussions.

Maybelline New York, Brooks Brothers, and other brands use Contextual Keyword Targeting in their Reddit campaigns. 

Early adopters with lower-funnel objectives that used Contextual Keyword Targeting saw a click-through rate (CTA) lift of 29% relative to their Community targeting campaigns, and a 28% lift relative to their Interest targeting campaigns alone.

These advertisers also saw a 59% decrease in click cost per action (CPA), a high-value "last click" attribution, compared with Community targeting, and a 53% decrease in click CPAs compared to Interest targeting alone.