Reddit is opening some of the most visited real estate on the internet to advertising. The platform now offers a new ad type called "Trending Takeover," which allows companies to place branded content on the Popular feed and search bar for 24 hours.
This gives advertisers a chance to place their content next to the biggest trending topics on the website, whether that's a cat video or a coronavirus update.
"One of the most popular parts of Reddit is our popular tab and the search bar," Shariq Rizvi, vice president of ads product and engineering at Reddit. "These are parts of the Reddit app that are visited by more than a third of our users on a daily basis."
The new offering marks Reddit's push to diversify beyond simple banner ads and promoted content. The site chose the Popular feed and search bar because they are core to Reddit's model of curation and discovery.
"These are the parts of the app where users go to discover the new trends, the conversations, the fads, which are born every day on Reddit," he said.
Reddit attracts upwards of 430 million users per month, according to the company.
Despite this expansive readership, the company has historically focused less on revenue than fellow social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook. But over the last year, it seems to have taken a renewed interest in boosting ad sales.
In April 2019, Reddit hired Jen Wong, formerly a senior executive at Time Inc., as chief operating officer. It also started pitching agencies more aggressively, according to a CNBC report.
"We've been growing our ad business in an aggressive way," Rizvi said. "We have seen tremendous growth year-over-year."
About nine million people with student loans missed their first payment after the recent pandemic pause, according to data.
Spending this holiday season is set to significantly rise, according to an economic survey from CNBC.
Google settled an antitrust lawsuit, Tesla is reportedly raising pay, a group is suing Utah over its social media policies for kids and the founder of Nikola was sentenced to prison.
The White House is lending its support to an auto industry effort to standardize Tesla’s electric vehicle charging plugs for all EVs in the United States.
Some of America’s biggest retailers are working to increase their shipping speeds to please shoppers expecting faster and faster deliveries.
A group representing several big tech companies is suing Utah over state laws about children's social media use.
Google has agreed to pay $700 million to settle an anti-trust settlement.
Stocks were up after the closing bell as Wall Street continued to pin their hopes on rate cuts after last week's comments from the Fed.
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Google has agreed to pay $700 million and make several other concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competition against its Android app store — the same issue that went to trial in another case that could result in even bigger changes.
