• by Colin Kirkland , June 12, 2024

Reddit, the now-public social news platform, is continuing to build out its ad business, now partnering with digital analytics provider DoubleVerify. The server-to-server integration will enable global brand safety and brand suitability measurement on Reddit’s ads delivery.

According to Reddit, content is classified in accordance with the industry standard GARM framework: directly above and below an ad for in-feed placements, and above the ad for conversation placements.

“By pairing third-party transparency and first-party controls, advertisers can check that their advertising aligns with suitable content based on their brand parameters and use Reddit’s on-platform controls to continue refining their ad delivery based on DV’s reporting insights,” Reddit said in a recent statement.

Brands advertising on Reddit can also use DoubleVerify to leverage keywords from post text and subreddits related to flagged posts within Negative Keyword Exclusions or Reddit Community Exclusions, providing them with a stronger likelihood that their promotions are not being placed beside offensive content.

According to DoubleVerify, initial testing across a number of campaigns showed that over 99% of impressions appeared adjacent to content that was deemed safe. However, it is worth noting that DoubleVerify reported recent results for ads on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which they then confirmed as incorrect, with its Pinnacle software displaying the wrong data for X advertisers between October 2023 and March 2024.

While altering the reported safety rating from 70% for some X advertisers to over 99% across the board pleased X owner Elon Musk, it confused many advertisers who were seeing their ads displayed beside harmful content on the platform during that time period.

A recent report by Business Insider stated that verifiers like DoubleVerify don’t have as much access to major social media platforms as some may think, leaving “open the possibility that tech platforms can cherry-pick the data for the likes of DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to rubber stamp, experts have said.”

In other words, aside from campaign-specific reporting, it’s difficult to say how indicative a 99% brand safety rating is across an entire social platform like Reddit.