SANTA BARBARA — In a sea of loosening “social” graphs, it is an oasis of strong communities. Now Reddit wants to be an advertising powerhouse, too.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Reddit COO Jen Wong discusses the company’s strategy to marry content, distribution and customer data produce relevance and addressable TV.
On March 19, Reddit, one of the biggest community publishing platforms, began offering native posts to advertisers. The only difference from a regular post by a community member? The “promoted” label at the top of the unit. In keeping with Reddit’s standard post format, users can even upvote, downvote or comment on native ads.
Wong says video is a capability, too. “We’ve always allowed embeds into the platform,” she adds. “And, with the redesign, we opened a native player so that our users, in addition to posts and stills, could actually upload video. And it just exploded.
“Our users, which are 18 to 24, spend a lot of time with video, there was a lot of discussion about that today. And as a result, we accelerated the deployment of our video ad product.”
To that end, Wong, who joined in April after being Time Inc’s COO and digital president, recently launched the ability for advertisers to buy Reddit video on a cost-per-view (CPV) basis.
In keeping with Wong’s idea of full control, Reddit runs its own ad auction platform and a proprietary ad server. It is guaranteeing results for advertisers.
Wong says Reddit communities tend to be brand-safe because moderators are already motivated to keep well maintained spaces.
This video is part of a series leading up to, and covering the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. This Beet.TV program is sponsored by Xandr, a unit of AT&T.
