So, when I left much of social media last year, I was left in a bit of a pickle. Without Meta and other mainstream social media outlets, my advertising options were somewhat limited. I decided a couple of months ago to give Reddit and YouTube a go for my next crowdfunding campaign, Coyote & Crow Digital, which ran last month.
For both sites, I created a similar ad and did the things you normally do, including adding a total budget and a daily budget, blah blah blah. I did notice that Reddit’s interface seemed a little wonky and outdated, but I made it work. My ad was approved (on both sites) and I put them out of my mind. But on the day of the launch, when the ads were to go live, I decided to check and see how they were doing. The reddit ad hadn’t launched and the status had changed from approved to pending. I hadn’t been notified.
Three days later, and numerous hours spent with customer service, I was finally able to get a clear answer on why, in the end, the campaign was not approved. Apparently, because my ad linked to Kickstarter, it fell afoul of their ‘no crypto or finance ads’ rules. Which, okay. You can debate whether a board game Kickstarter is ‘finance/crypto’. Whatever. But why approve the campaign, but then hold it up without telling me until after it’s too late to do anything about it? That’s time and opportunity lost that I could have put elsewhere. And why does it take days and multiple CS interactions to get there?
Fast forward to this month and I decide to just do some normal advertising that leads to my webstore. I’d previously opted in for a $500 ad credit when I spend $500 on ads with Reddit. I thought, okay, I’ll drop $500 and use the bonus $500. I set both my YouTube and my Reddit ads to go live on September 27th and to run through October 31st. I put in a $25/day cap and a $500 max for both sites.
Ads on both sites were approved and went live on the 27th. So far, so good.
Right away, I noticed that YouTube’s metrics were way better than Reddit’s. But based on the click rate through that date, it still seemed like it was worth it to keep the Reddit ads going . The first few days, I spent $8.78, $2.71, $1.51, and $8.16. Around that time, I also received recommendations on audience modifications and clarifications, which I took as they seemed like good suggestions.
I thought everything was good to go. So, I let Reddit do its thing and went back to other business.
Here’s where things went off the rails. Apparently, by taking their two sets of suggestions, I’d created two new additional ads, each with the same per day cap. At the same time, each ad started blowing up to the max $25 daily spend. Now I’m being charged $75 per day. And by the time I realize this is happening, I’ve racked up $500 in ad spend – as of today, the 8th.
Jumping into the interface to see what happened, I now see the extra ads, but there’s no way to get back into the setup and see my cap and per day spend. And where was the $500 credit? I jumped onto a chat with a CSR and got the following info:
- According to the rep, I didn’t put a cap (there’s no way for me to confirm or deny that as I can no longer access that portion of the setup)
- Accepting the recommendations created new ads, they didn’t modify the first one, and they mirrored the daily cap for the first
- I had to spend the $500 by the end of September in order to get the ad credit.
So, I shut off my ads with Reddit and won’t be doing that again. To add a little lemon juice to the cut, here’s the end result data if you’re interested:
- Reddit: $573 spent. 345K impressions. 985 clicks. CPC of $0.51 (12 days of ads)
- YouTube: $163 spent (so far), 43K impressions. 7.5K views, 2.4K clicks, CPC of $.06 – on going ad
Sure, there may have been some user error on my part. Maybe I didn’t read the fine print. I’ll cop to that. But between the interface, the lack of clear communication, the obfuscated fine print and conditions? It makes the cost per click of 0.51 pretty ridiculous next to the .06 from YouTube. I’d rather triple my ad spend there.