We’ve started experimenting with various advertising strategies here at 80legs. So far we’ve mostly focused on Google AdWords, but we’re now looking at other channels as well.
We just wrapped up our first experiment with Reddit Ads. I recently read both Gabriel Weinberg’s and Jason Wilk’s posts on using Reddit Ads. Here’s a summary of the results they got with their ads:
DuckDuckGo (Gabriel):
- Duration: 13 days
- Cost: $650 ($50 per day)
- Impressions: 1,288,378 (282,732 uniques)
- Clicks: 20,700 (18,420 uniques)
- CTR: 1.61% (6.49% unique)
Whiteyboard (Jason):
- Duration: 2 days
- Cost: $700 ($350 per day)
- Impressions: 299,784 (63,000 uniques)
- Clicks: 4,226 (4,197 uniques)
- CTR: 1.41% (6.68% unique)
- Duration: 6 days
- Cost:$120 ($20 per day)
- Impressions: 402,537 (86,174 uniques)
- Clicks: 1,327 (1,276 uniques)
- CTR: 0.33% (1.48% unique)
And here’s some additional data from Google Analytics:
- Pages/Visit: 2.41
- Avg. Time on Site: 01:11
- Bounce Rate: 50.25%
While our numbers seem quite pitiful compared to DDG and Whiteyboard, I’m not exactly disappointed. Both DDG and Whiteyboard are consumer products/services. We’re a B2B service, which means our target market is much smaller in terms of # of individuals. There are going to be far fewer people interested in web crawling than using a search engine or a whiteboard.
The most important factor is ROI. Our ad cost $120. I have at least 1-2 people that contacted us expressing interest in purchasing plans or custom services. Our plus plan is just $99/month, so I’m fairly confident the ad was a “win” for us.
We also had 116 signups during the course of the Reddit ad. A typical 6-day period will have 80 – 100 signups. So that’s also good, but not astoundingly awesome.
Overall, I would say the ad worked well for us. We’re going to try some variations on the ad (targeting specific crawl packages, etc.) and see if that works better.
B2C ads are going to perform better than B2B ads on pretty much any ad channel. With a positive ROI, the ad was worth the expense and at the very least warrants additional experimentation.
I’m curious why you posted the ad to the technology section instead of another section like programming? Or perhaps language specific sections would be better such as the Python subreddit?
I picked Technology just because it seemed like a generic category. We can definitely do more specific ads for programming sections.
Did you setup a specific landing page for the reddit campaign that might help increase your conversion rates… then do a/b testing on the message on the ad and on the page to further increase conversion rates…
also look at stumbleupon very cheap, but terrible CTRs
We did not set up a specific landing page, but I think that’s a good idea for next time.
We’ll take a look at stumbleupon – thanks for the tip. In the past, we’ve gotten pretty good organic traffic from them.
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