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Reddit has hired former Meta exec Jim Squires in a newly created role of evp of business marketing and growth, the latest move in the platform’s charm offensive toward the marketing community, Adweek can exclusively report.
With the appointment of Squires, Reddit will be uniting the product marketing team, responsible for listening to marketer needs and working with the engineers to create new ad products, and the business marketing team, which handles outbound efforts, previously two separate departments.
Squires, who worked at Meta for 13 years and helped bring advertising to Facebook’s newsfeed and Instagram, will be charged with expanding Reddit’s work with small businesses and with growing Reddit’s international footprint.
The hire is Reddit’s latest move to woo advertisers as it prepares for a long-awaited IPO.
In the past year, Reddit has released a bevy of new ad products, including updates to its self-serve ad manager tool, a simple creative tool to help make ad campaigns, over 1,000 new communities for advertisers to target and a tool that makes these communities easier to search.
The platform has also offered increased support for marketers hoping to design campaigns bespoke to the platform, sources tell Adweek, and has offered discounts to agencies. Reddit told Canvas Worldwide that it would waive the 15% media fee typically associated with using third-party data, said Raul Tafur, vp of paid social. Reddit did not comment on offering agency discounts.
Some of the efforts appear to be paying off. Since the beginning of the year, Reddit has signed up thousands of new advertisers to the platform and doubled the number of advertisers activating campaigns, the company said. Reddit’s U.S. advertiser revenues are anticipated to increase by 15% to $443.9 million this year, according to Insider Intelligence.
Yet, Reddit is still an underdog among social platforms. By comparison, Insider Intelligence pegs TikTok’s 2023 revenue at $8.75 billion. Ad buyers told Adweek that they are finding more success with Reddit campaigns than previously, but it still has work to do to become a serious performance player or mainstay of the media budget.
Marketers, meet Reddit
Reddit has not always been known as a place for advertising, with brands fearing previous brand safety scandals and tight-knit communities that are wary of intrusion.