It's little surprise that when we think of paid social media, we think of Facebook ads. Facebook is the 800 lb gorilla with the most users, most sophisticated platform and most proof of success. But there are loads of other opportunities on social media channels, and they're getting better all the time. In fact, Pinterest and Reddit made some major updates to their advertising programs over the last couple weeks. Let's take a look at these updates, and why you should care.
What's New: Lots of great stuff! Firstly, Pinterest opened up Promoted Pins to all advertisers. No longer do you need approval to run paid campaigns on Pinterest. All it takes is an account and a credit card.
Pinterest's ad manager also now contains a bulk editor, allowing businesses to more easily upload and manage ad campaign components.
Pinterest has also updated their targeting capabilities. Previously, advertisers could target by 30 different broad interest categories. Now, there are more than 420 interest at your disposal, allowing you to get more granular and specific to reach the right audience. Additionally, you can reach existing customers by uploading a list of email addresses, similar to Facebook's custom audience targeting. Note: this last piece is only available from Pinterest Marketing Developer Partners at this time, but will be rolled out to all advertisers "later this year."
Finally, they enhanced their conversion tracking pixel. Now it can record order value and quantity, providing more detailed metrics on actual sales goals.
What's It To You: Unlike other social networks, Pinterest is focused on good and products. Users aren't pinning news articles or photos of family and friends. They're pinning products or categories of products they like and typically, want to purchase one day. Pinterest is all about shopping, which makes it ideal for all brands, especially ecommerce shops. And it's primarily used by thirty-something mothers, the families' "Chief Financial Officers" if you will (but I kinda wish I hadn't). These are the purchase decision makers brands want to reach.
Pinterest is also more durable than other social networks. A single pin takes about 3.5 months to get 50% of its engagement, while a typical Facebook post is out-of-sight-out-of-mind in a day. And Promoted Pins get approximately 30% more engagement than organic pins initially, then an additional 5% bump even after the campaign has ended.
What's New: Reddit is now offering an auction-based advertising system, allowing advertisers to bid for ad space rather than guaranteeing it to the first bidder. This alone makes Reddit ads more appealing and accessible to advertisers. They sweetened the pot by reducing minimum campaign spend from $20 to $5, reducing minimum CPM from $1.50 to $0.20 and eliminating the tacked on CPM costs to target by country ($2.00) and city ($5.00).
What's It To You: Reddit users are active, educated, well-off and extremely tech-savvy. Of the 234 million Reddit users, 81% are returning visitors that spend upwards of 16 minutes on the site. Seventy-eight percent are college-educated, the median HHI is nearly $70,000 and 92% made online purchases in the last six months. And it's not as male dominant as you think--47% of Reddit users are female.
When you advertise on Reddit, you can reach a passionate and discerning audience that has money to spend and does so online. And you don't have to spend a lot to test it.
Facebook's not the only game in town. Running paid campaigns on Pinterest or Reddit can be efficient and effective way to get in front of new and highly engaged audiences that are ready, willing and able to spend money online.
