Reddit introduces Collection Ads in latest shopping push

Reddit has added new shopping tools to monetize authentic human conversations on its platform.

On Tuesday, the social media platform announced the rollout of Collection Ads, which combine a lead image with shoppable product tiles in a single carousel, connecting discovery to purchase. Collection Ads sit under what Reddit has dubbed more broadly as Dynamic Product Ads.

CMO Jim Squires said the platform’s ad strategy is people-first thanks to the unfiltered nature of conversations that take place on Reddit.

“Reddit has been around for over 20 years,” Squires told Retail Brew, “and the DNA of the platform is it’s the most human place on the internet, and that’s become even more important as AI has propagated, and we are inundated with more information than we’ve ever had.”

Squires noted about half of the posts on the platform are “commercial in nature” and interest in shopping among Redditors runs the gamut from clothing and beauty to B2B tech and home goods. The key difference, Squires said, is shopping intent is more skewed toward higher-value, higher-consideration purchases—cars, electronics, premium clothing—not low-cost commodities “that you’re just going to pick up at the grocery store.”

“To start with humans and that behavior, and then we have our business partners, which we want to support and enable to connect with people and communities on the platform,” Squires said. “That connection between businesses and people happens through our marketing products like Dynamic Product Ads and Collection Ads.”

Reddit is also testing Community and Deal overlays that integrate Reddit content directly into the ads experience. The company reported $690 million in ad revenue for its most recent quarter.

Shopify play: Reddit’s new Shopify integration (still in testing) makes it easier for businesses to set up and ramp up things like product catalogs and tracking on the platform. With Shopify, brands can automatically figure out which products to show each user based on their interests and browsing to potentially help drive sales with less manual work.

“I think about the Shopify relationship as we want to make it as easy as possible for all businesses—small all the way to large brands—to be able to get onto Reddit,” Squires said.

Overall, he added, “people are actively making purchase decisions, and [we] want to give them the ability to do that effectively, and we want to deliver performance for retailers on the platform.”