How Upvotes Work With Reddit Ads

We’ve gotten some questions about just how the upvote mechanism works with Reddit Ads. Most often when you scroll through Reddit Ads in the carousel (top of the page, arrow is on the right-hand side) you’ll see that most of the ads have a dot instead of a number, but every now and then an ad will have an upvote count. Recently we reached out to Reddit’s advertising team and asked them why this is and we were told that when an ad shows a dot it has negative upvotes, but if the upvote count is above zero the number will display.

If you are not seeing an upvote count next to an ad it means the score is below 0 and will show a dot in its place. We do not have the option to turn off upvotes/downvotes. – MyNameIzKhan

We’ve reached out for clarification on what exactly this means, if anything. Some advertisers have expressed a concern that not having upvotes could hurt their ad in some way. That seems unlikely but we’re asking to be sure.

There’s also the question of click-through or engagement rates, do upvote counts help that? Currently the answer to this question seems to be no as none of the ads in the Toyota campaign we recently wrote a case study on had an upvote count but gained great engagement with the Reddit community.

EDIT: Reddit Ads staffer MyNameIzKhan replied to our question about what Reddit might use the upvote count on ads for. He told us that they do not help or jurt an ad, but that they could be used in the future.