Reddit Pixel and conversion tracking: a simple setup guide
You cannot manage a campaign you cannot measure. The Reddit Pixel is a small piece of code on your website that tells Reddit what people do after they click your ad. Without it you know how many clicks you bought and nothing about what they were worth.
Setting it up takes an hour or two. Skipping it wastes months.
What the Reddit Pixel does
When somebody arrives from an ad, the pixel records the visit and any actions you choose to track. That gives you three things:
- Measurement. Which campaigns, communities and ads produce leads and sales.
- Optimisation. Reddit's system learns which kinds of people convert and looks for more of them.
- Audiences. You can build retargeting lists of visitors and lookalike audiences from your customers.
Which events to track
Reddit supports a standard list of events. The ones most businesses need are:
- Page Visit: somebody landed on your site.
- View Content: somebody viewed a key page, such as a product or pricing page.
- Lead: a form was submitted.
- Sign Up: an account or trial was created.
- Add to Cart and Purchase: for online stores, ideally with the order value attached.
Track the action that actually matters to your business, plus one or two earlier steps. Earlier steps give the system more data to learn from while final conversions are still few.
The Conversions API
Browsers and ad blockers stop a share of pixel events from ever being sent, and Reddit's audience is more privacy-minded than most. The Conversions API, often called CAPI, sends the same events directly from your server to Reddit. It does not replace the pixel. It fills the gaps.
Running both, with deduplication switched on so the same conversion is not counted twice, gives the most complete picture. For any business spending seriously, it is worth the extra setup.
A simple setup checklist
- Create the pixel in your Reddit Ads account.
- Install it on every page, directly or through a tag manager.
- Add conversion events for your key actions.
- Add the Conversions API if you have the technical resources.
- Test: perform each action yourself and confirm it appears in the events dashboard.
- Add UTM tags to every ad link so your own analytics can see Reddit traffic too.
- Only then launch.
Understanding attribution
Reddit reports two kinds of conversions. Click-through conversions happen after somebody clicked an ad. View-through conversions happen after somebody saw an ad, did not click, and converted later. Both are real influences, but they are not equal. We report them separately and lean on click-through numbers for decisions, with view-through as supporting evidence.
It is also wise to compare Reddit's numbers with your own analytics and your CRM. They will never match exactly, because each system counts differently. What you want is a consistent story.
Mistakes that corrupt the data
- Firing the lead event on page load instead of on a successful form submission.
- Counting twice because the pixel and the API are not deduplicated.
- Tracking only the final sale in a business with a long sales cycle, leaving the system with nothing to learn from.
- Forgetting the consent banner. Privacy rules in Europe, and privacy law in Israel, affect what you may track. Set this up correctly from the start.
Why we insist on it
Team of Monkeys does not launch campaigns without working tracking. It is the only way to prove results and the only way to improve them. Measurement is how we know the campaigns we run deliver click-through and conversion rates that lead the industry, and how we show it to you in plain reports.
Clean data also lets us be honest quickly. If the numbers show Reddit is not working for your product, we will say so rather than keep spending. Our goal is repeat business, and you will only come back if you are consistently happy with the results.
Common questions
Do I need a developer to install the Reddit Pixel?
Not for the basics. Most website platforms and tag managers make it a copy and paste job. The Conversions API and purchase values usually need some developer time.
How do I know the pixel is working?
Use the event testing view in the ads dashboard and perform a test conversion yourself. If it does not appear within a few minutes, something needs fixing before you launch.
Want to know if Reddit will work for your product?
Team of Monkeys is a Reddit advertising agency that plans, writes, launches and manages campaigns with click-through and conversion rates that lead the industry, across many industries. If we do not think your product will succeed on Reddit, we will tell you before you spend any money. Our goal is repeat business, and we only earn that when you are consistently happy with the results. See our simple pricing or book a 30 minute call.