Reddit’s newly launched Australian team will help the business capitalise on a growing user base, as well as strong interest from global clients that want to get closer to the Australian market.
The company revealed its Barangaroo-based team earlier this week, which will be headed by former Woolies and Amazon executive David Ray. Australia is Reddit’s fourth largest market, and is growing 40% year-on-year.
“Australia's a great opportunity when it comes to digital advertising, there’s plenty of opportunities to work with all kinds of clients in the Australian market so we’re excited about that,” Reddit EVP and president of global advertising Harold Klaje tells AdNews.
“We have also seen some of our larger global clients from the US that have been working with us to target the Australian market, and they were very pleased.
“So those are the three things; the user base and growth, the sheer size of the Australian market when it comes to digital dollars, and then the traction that we've already seen with some of our global clients which meant it's really time for us to get even closer to the market, even closer to the users there and closer to the companies there.”
62% of Australian Reddit users are 18-34 year olds. Additionally, 40% of users on Reddit are not on Twitter in Australia, 51% are not on Snapchat, and 70% are not on TikTok.
Klaje argues the research-based nature of Reddit, a “community of communities”, where users discuss topics from skincare to gaming, makes it distinct from other social media platforms. In Australia topics such as technology, retail, CPG, and gaming are popular, as well as growing categories such as property.
“People really appreciate being part of a community and they trust each other, learn from each other, and that results in a highly engaged, information seeking audience that is learning about what companies have to offer and share,” he says.
“We’ve done third-party research on this and find that because of that, users are doing more research on Reddit compared to other platforms and they often purchased faster and higher amounts after their education and information sharing sessions in their Reddit communities.”
Popular local advertisers in Australia spread across the technology, retail, CPG, and gaming space, and Klaje hopes the local team will help expand that.
“The key goal we're most interested in is that being in Barangaroo means we can be even closer to our communities, help them even more with local content, be in the pulse and the heartbeat of what's happening in Australia,” he says.
“And then the second one is that we wanted to make sure we are helping as many advertisers in the right way possible so that our users are benefiting from their messages on Reddit and that they are getting benefits from sharing that message with our users on Reddit.
“That’s the overarching goal we want to achieve; happy users, happy clients, and that's what we'll be looking at with a launch plan.”
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