Reddit will track and publicly display all political ad spending on its platform for the first time
- A new subreddit will track all political ad spending and data
- It can be viewed by the public and dates back to January 1st, 2019
- Users can view the ad amount, the number of impressions, and targeting
- Comments must be enabled on ads for the first 24 hours after they’re run
Reddit has taken a major step toward greater ad transparency on its platform.
According to Reddit, it will now publicly list all of the political ad campaigns that have run on its site dating back to January 1, 2019.
The campaigns will be publicly viewable on a new subreddit called r/RedditPoliticalAds which is currently live.
Reddit will show users a breakdown of political ad spending for the first time in a new subreddit meant to increase the platform’s transparency (stock)
‘In this community, you will find information on the individual advertiser, their targeting, impressions, and spend on a per-campaign basis,’ Reddit said in a post.
‘We plan to consistently update this subreddit as new political ads run on Reddit, so we can provide transparency into our political advertisers and the conversation their ad(s) inspires.’
In addition to the amount of money spent, the listings also detail how many impressions the ad made and also where it’s being targeted.
The new transparency subreddit will also come with new guidelines for political advertisers running campaigns on the site.
According to Reddit, campaigns will be required to liaise with Reddit’s sales team on what types of ads they’re running and will also be required to leave comments enabled on ads for the first 24 hours.
As noted by The Verge, however, campaigns running an ad are still allowed to moderate comments which means that it’s possible for them to remove any feedback that doesn’t jive with the campaign’s message.
Only ads that actually run on the platform will be listed and if an ad runs mistakenly, Reddit said it will include a piece of flair that states it was ‘Approve in Error.’
Reddit will join other major social media platforms in its decision to be more upfront about political ad spending.
While Facebook had a database in which users can review who had paid for what ads and how much money, Twitter has decided to do away with political ads on its platform entirely.