There’s been a few people who commented this in the past, but as an advertiser on Reddit, I want to share the numbers I see.
First, there’s a few things to understand in the world of advertising:
- Cost Per Impression - Usually shown as a cost per 1000 impressions, this is how much it costs to run a regular ad
- Cost Per Click - This is a different type of ad where you only pay for who clicks. It’s also the reason sometimes you see really bad ads - They’re only paying per click, so they want the most gullible customers
- Analytics - I can watch who comes to my website and what they do. I can actually watch a lot more info than that, but it’s all I need to run my businesses
- Organic User - Someone who came to my website without an ad
PSA: If you’re not using uBlock Origin to block ads, please install it. Firefox - Chrome. Every other mainstream adblocker sells your data in some capacity, but uBlock Origin is open source.
Now, with those things in mind, I pay for Cost Per Click, and I target a more expensive user group. In the ad I’m about to show you (picked at random, but it’s within ±20% of most my ads), it costs me an average of $0.82 every time someone clicks my ad:
(Yes, it’s brutally expensive. If you really hate ads, install AdNauseam. You will cost advertising companies thousands of dollars.)
But okay that’s fine, because roughly 2,000 people went to my site, right? Lets see what they did when they went there
See - There’s something interesting about this, and it’s less apparent in other advertising networks. You see while Reddit charged me 1,600$ for 2,000 users, my own analytics show only 1,142 people came to my site in the same time window - and that number also includes my organic users, by the way.
So what happened to almost 50% of the users I paid for? Some people accuse Reddit of inflating the numbers, but that’s illegal, and there’s a much simpler explanation. Reddit’s PMs and are deliberately designing ad placement to maximize clicks (and get more money). What they don’t realize, is they’ve made everyone miss-click on ads, so both users and advertisers miss out.
In fact, that miss-clicking part is trivial to prove. Guess when I ran advertising campaigns on Reddit?
Anyways, that’s all for now. Reddit doesn’t only screw over their users, but their advertisers as well.
So, love this stuff. It’s been my career for nearly 20 years
Check out the engagement rate/bounce rate on those. I bet it’s 15% engagement, tops (meaning 85% bounced). Probably as low as 5%
That’s typical for ads like this. You’re right that you’re losing half your traffic (though I would pick sessions, not users, to see it a bit clearer. GA4 makes it more difficult but you should be able to create it).
What happens is users scroll, users accidentally click, and immediately hit back because, oh shit, they didn’t want to click. Ad registers a click, browser window is closed before your gtag registers. I bet their own pixel doesn’t even fire, if you have it on the site
Then the ones who don’t close it in time, that’s what you’re seeing in reporting. When your bosses or the marketing team ask what those users did, you can confidently say, without looking, “nothing” and you will be right 99% of the time.
Now, we could argue that display ads are NOT for direct responses. They are to supplement other campaigns so your brand is freshwe when you do something better like paid search or emails. But if they want to charge by the click, it’s still useless traffic.
Does Reddit offer CPA (cost per action)? Doubt it, since the sub-0.05% conversion rate means they’ll get almost nothing, and they know it.
Also, look into Looker studio for these reports (free with GA), since GA4 sucks so bad right now. Hit me up with a PM if you haven’t used it but want some free pointers or lesson (I have a FT job, I’m not scrounging for freelance work)