Toyota – Extending TV Reddit Ads Case Study

For the last few weeks Toyota has been running a few ads via the Reddit Advertising system. The four ads they have been running share a few things in common; they all use a question as part of their ad title and they all include an embedded YouTube video of a recent Toyota Rav4 Hybrid commercial. Toyota’s team also engaged with users in the comments of each ad and doled out Reddit Gold as a reward for top comments, the title of 2 of the ads included a mention of the Reddit Gold giveaway.

This technique appears to be pretty unique as far as Reddit Ads go and earned Toyota thousands of comments across the 4 ads. We clearly don’t now how efficient or effective of a campaign this was in terms of ROI for Toyota, but it shows a nice blueprint for other brands and businesses trying to drum up engagement on the Reddit website via the ads system.

To try and detect how well a Reddit post or ad performs we use a metric we call Engagement Points. When we calculated the Engagement Points for the 4 Toyota ads we quickly discovered that ads that included the mention of Reddit Gold performed better with the improvement being between 100% and 165%.

toyota rav4 reddit ads engagement points

AD: Who would you take to Mars

  • Comments: 766
  • Top comment points: 528
  • Gold giveaway in title?: No
  • URL: https://www.reddit.com/comments/4oae7n/toyota_here_with_a_quick_question_if_you_had_to/

AD: What would you name a Mars Colony

  • Comments: 2,086
  • Top comment points: 519
  • Gold giveaway in title?: Yes
  • URL: https://www.reddit.com/comments/4oaeja/youre_the_first_to_arrive_at_a_mars_colony_and/

AD: Tell a lumberjack joke

  • Comments: 695
  • Top comment points: 286
  • Gold giveaway in title?: No
  • URL: https://www.reddit.com/comments/4oad9r/lumberjacks_arent_known_for_their_sense_of_humor/

AD: Where would you go as a wolf

  • Comments: 1,235
  • Top comment points: 771
  • Gold giveaway in title?: Yes
  • URL: https://www.reddit.com/comments/4oablb/hey_reddit_were_the_folks_behind_the_toyota_rav4/

This is the first large scale advertising campaign we’ve seen on Reddit by a major brand. We’ve reached out to Toyota to see if they’ll share more details about the campaign and will let you know if there are any updates.

Joe Youngblood

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Joe Youngblood is a top Dallas SEO, Digital Marketer, and Marketing Theorist. When he's not working with clients or writing about marketing he spends time supporting local non-profits and taking his dogs to various parks.

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