Reddit is making a pitch to financial marketers by highlighting data that shows how effective financial services ads are in the app.
This is probably not the first market sector that comes to mind when considering Reddit’s promotional potential for ads. But with more than 500 million weekly users, Reddit has a large audience of people exploring all kinds of topics.
As explained by Reddit: “Reddit brings together people actively seeking answers with communities built around shared experiences and expertise. For Financial Services shoppers, those conversations can play an important role in the decision journey. 62% of financial services shoppers in the UK on Reddit say that reading honest, unfiltered experiences from everyday people is an important factor when researching products or services, and 70% in Germany say Reddit helps them buy with confidence.”
In order to highlight the value of the app for financial services promotions, Reddit commissioned TransUnion to conduct a marketing mix modeling analysis of the in-app financial promotions that have run in the region comprising Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The study showed that financial services advertisers are seeing 9 times returns on their Reddit ad spend, which the analysis said is much higher than this sector sees in other apps.
A key benefit of Reddit ads in this context is that the promotions can amplify the impact of financial services ads across other platforms.“TransUnion found that 81% of Reddit’s total impact came directly from Reddit, while 19% came from improved performance in other channels — nearly one-fifth of its impact showed up elsewhere on the media plan,” Reddit said.
The data showed that paid search drives the biggest benefit in this respect.
That makes sense, given that Reddit posts have increasingly been cited by search engines and artificial intelligence chatbot responses. As such, increasing discussion around a brand in the app would have expanded exposure potential.
However, it’s also worth noting that Reddit has seen a major decline in search referrals lately. The platform reported last week in its Q3 earnings that search referral traffic dropped by more than one million referrals on average per week in October.
That would likely reduce the expanded benefit of Reddit exposure through promotions.
Either way, Reddit could offer expanded opportunities to reach interested consumers seeking financial services info and products.
