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."
Cheddar News' reporter Angela Miles reports from the Cboe floor with Scott Bauer, CEO of the Prosper Trading Academy, to break down Apple, Moderna, and Datadog earnings for options traders.
Billionaire Stephen Deckoff's SD Investments has purchased two islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands that were previously owned by the late sex criminal and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Two 10-year-olds are among 300 children who worked at McDonald's restaurants illegally, a Labor Department investigation of franchisees in Kentucky found.
U.S. regulators say Facebook misled parents and failed to protect the privacy of children using its Messenger Kids app, including misrepresenting the access it provided to app developers to private user data.
Tom McNeela, chief RIA solutions officer with RetireOne, joined Cheddar News to explain how people can use their life insurance policies for an emergency loan. "There's a lot of advantages and opportunities with permanent life insurance policy," he said, "if you have one, and there's cash value in there, you can take a loan out, and most of the time, it's a better rate than what you can get at your bank."
Cheddar News checks in on The Day Ahead as more earnings are on tap from companies Thursday including Apple, Lyft, Kellogg and Expedia while Vice President is expected to meet with some top tech CEOs to discuss the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
