INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The advertising-lite days of Reddit are now firmly in the rear-view as the rapidly maturing company begins to seriously chase advertising
Today, Reddit has announced that it is rolling out autoplaying video ads across the site on mobile and desktop.
Reddit is looking to tread
as carefully as they can as the company begins to quickly scale its ad products; its vocal user base has often proven resistant to sweeping
Users will be able to turn off autoplay on video ads in their main feed.Additionally, for the time being, video ads will only be served to
users that are utilizing the expanded card display type, which is the default of three new modes in Reddit latest mobile and desktop
redesign.
These are also just for standalone ad campaigns at the moment; this rollout will not add pre-roll ads to videos that users click
Additionally, video ads will be available to managed advertising partners first with all partners gaining access in the next month or
so.
The popular site, which currently reports 330 million monthly active users, has remained relatively unchanged for much of the first half
of this decade, but over the past of couple years has accelerated its product growth with a redesign of its mobile apps and desktop site, a
move to host images on video natively and, more recently, a major push to integrate native advertising.
&We have an opportunity to
business-build,& Reddit VP of Brand Partnerships Zubair Jandali told TechCrunch
&Reddit has remarkable product-market fit on the consumer side and we&ve not layered a business on top of it
There aren&t a lot of opportunities that tend to come around like that.&
The video ads business will be built onto the company native video
product, which only recently came to exist
The company history with external sites like Imgur and YouTube hosting its linked content has been long, but this past August the company
launched its own native video platform, which the company says has continued to excel, with native video views growing 23 percent
month-over-month.
Autoplaying video ads are a major progression for a site that only rolled out native ads to its mobile apps a couple of
Reddit has been making some big sweeping changes to its site, but by delivering a lot of new utility to users alongside new changes to its
advertising platform, things seem to be progressing more smoothly than many would&ve expected
We&ll see if that continues.
