Reddit launched several new shopping tools to enhance its Dynamic Product Ads experience, which is the catalog-powered advertising solution that it launched one year ago. Here’s what’s new:
- Collection Ads – This new ad format allows businesses to lead with a lifestyle hero image paired with shoppable product thumbnails in a single carousel, enabling a new way to discover various products from a single ad placement. The collection ads are catalog-powered, which means the product tiles are pulled dynamically from the advertiser’s existing product feed and price and availability are updated in real-time.
- Community & Deal Overlays – These are badges that appear on top of product images and display things like “Redditor’s Top Pick” or call out discounts and sale pricing.
- Alpha Shopify Integration – The integration simplifies product catalog ingestion and pixel installation for merchants. Reddit says the connection enables businesses to automatically identify which products to show to the right user, in the right context, to drive desired outcomes, without the merchant having to manually configure the ads. The Alpha status means the Shopify integration is not yet broadly available, so merchants will either have to contact a Reddit sales rep to get access or wait for a wider rollout, for which no timeline has been given.
Reddit says that it’s seen a 40% YoY increase in the number of high-intent shopping conversations on the platform and that 84% of shoppers feel more secure in their purchases after researching products on the platform — which I can relate to. Nothing inspires more confidence when shopping than a personal product endorsement from “BonerChamp420” and “RonaldDump69”.
On a separate note, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced that the company will be implementing “human verification” practices and introducing clear labeling for non-human accounts. Huffman made it clear that Reddit doesn’t “need or want your identity” and that anonymity is still supported on the platform. They just want to confirm that you’re human because “Reddit’s purpose is for people to talk to people.”
