Reddit ads targeting: how to reach the right people

By the Team of Monkeys Reddit ads team | Updated 15 November 2026 | 3 min read

Targeting is the reason to advertise on Reddit in the first place. Other platforms guess what people care about from their behaviour. On Reddit, people tell you, by joining communities built around exactly the thing they care about. Get the targeting right and half the work is done.

Community targeting

You pick specific subreddits and your ad appears to people who visit or belong to them. This is the sharpest tool Reddit offers. A backup software company can reach system administrators. A running shoe brand can reach marathon runners. A payroll product can reach small business owners.

Best for: almost every campaign, especially at the start.

Watch out for: choosing only by size. A community of 40,000 engaged professionals often beats one of two million casual readers.

Interest targeting

Reddit groups users into broader interest categories based on what they read and engage with, such as technology, personal finance or gaming. You reach more people, with less precision.

Best for: scaling a campaign after community targeting has shown you what works.

Keyword targeting

Your ad appears alongside posts and conversations that contain the words you choose. This catches people at the exact moment they are reading about your subject, wherever on Reddit that happens.

Best for: reaching researchers in the middle of a decision, and covering discussions that happen outside the obvious communities.

Custom audiences

You can also target people you already know:

• Website visitors, collected by the Reddit Pixel.
• Customer lists, uploaded securely.
• People who engaged with your earlier ads.
• Lookalike audiences, built by Reddit to resemble your best customers.

These power retargeting, which is where many campaigns earn their best conversion rates.

Location, device and time

You can narrow any audience by country, region or city, by device type and by time of day. This matters for Israeli companies selling abroad, who usually want to reach buyers in the United States, the United Kingdom or Europe during those markets' working hours.

You can also exclude

Good targeting is partly about who you leave out. You can exclude communities, keywords and existing customers so the budget goes only where it can do something useful.

The method we use to choose

When Team of Monkeys builds a campaign, the process looks like this:

1. List where the buyers actually talk. Not where we assume they are. We read the communities, look at what gets upvoted and note how people describe their problems.
2. Group communities by mindset. People in a professional subreddit and people in a beginner subreddit need different messages, even for the same product.
3. Write for each group. One ad per group at minimum. The ad copy should sound like it belongs there.
4. Launch small and compare. Each group gets its own ad group so the data is clean.
5. Move the money. After a couple of weeks the winners are clear, and budget flows to them.

This is slower than selecting twenty communities and pressing launch. It is also why the campaigns we run deliver click-through rates that lead the industry: the right message is in front of the right room.

Three targeting mistakes we see constantly

• Going too broad too early. Reach looks impressive and performs poorly.
• Stacking every option at once. Combining communities, interests and keywords in one ad group makes it impossible to see what is working.
• Ignoring the mood of a community. Some communities dislike advertisers on principle. Know before you buy.

Common questions

How many subreddits should I target?

For a first test, three to six closely related groups of communities, each in its own ad group. That is enough to compare without spreading the budget too thin.

Can I target a single subreddit?

Yes, provided it is large enough to deliver impressions. Very small communities may not spend your budget, so pair them with similar ones.

Keep reading

• Reddit retargeting and full-funnel campaigns explained
• Reddit ad formats explained: which one should you use?
• What is a good CTR for Reddit ads, and how do you raise it?
• Reddit ads for B2B: reaching buyers where they research
• Articles on advertising on Reddit