The Short Answer
For most local and professional service firms, I wouldn’t test Reddit ads yet. The results Reddit publishes come from national advertisers whose customers share an interest, not a ZIP code, and nothing I found shows a local firm getting leads from it.
- Reddit’s own help center advises giving each group of ads at least $50 a day. That’s about $1,500 a month by our math.
- The eight Reddit case studies we reviewed all featured national or large-market advertisers. On the four industry pages we opened, none was a law firm, a contractor or a one-town business.
- Reddit targets location by the viewer’s IP address, by country, region, US metro area or ZIP code. We found no radius option on the help pages we read.
- By default, Reddit credits a sale to an ad up to 28 days after a click, and up to 1 day after someone only saw the ad.
- Reddit is still worth reading for how your customers talk about their problems.
Every ad platform rep has a folder of case studies. In October a Reddit ad rep sent me four of them.
The numbers were real, in that every one is on Reddit’s own pages. I checked. But none of them answered the question I actually had, which was whether Reddit ads would bring my clients more customers than what they’re doing now.
Ultimately, I passed. My gut said no before I read a word, but I like to check my gut.
Here’s how I read them. I asked the same four questions of every case study. Below, I go through one question at a time, using the case study that shows why that question matters. You can ask the same four of any ad platform’s case study, or paste the page into your AI and have it ask them for you.
Question 1: Compared to What?
I started with Vitamix. Vitamix’s Reddit case study reported “2X More purchases with Redditor Highlights vs. without.” So it compares Reddit ads that used one Reddit feature against Reddit ads that didn’t, with Reddit’s own ads dashboard and brand-lift study listed as the source. The page shows no purchase counts, no spend and nothing about Reddit against Google or any other channel.
Northwest Registered Agent had the same problem. Its case study reports a 50% lower cost per lead than its goal. The page never says what the goal was. It also doesn’t say what a lead actually cost, how many leads came in, or whether they turned into customers. Beating your own goal is good news. You just can’t tell from the page whether the goal was $20 a lead or $200.
The comparison you need is Reddit against what you run now, at the same time, on the same kind of lead.
Question 2: Did the Ads Make the Sale, or Just Show Up Somewhere Before It?
Here’s how this question plays out. Say a friend refers someone to your firm. Before they call you, they see your Reddit ad once while scrolling. They hire you. Under “influenced” reporting, that ad can count toward the deal, because it showed up somewhere along the way. The referral is what sent them to you, but the ad still gets counted.
That’s what happened in Just Global’s case study. The page reports $1M in influenced pipeline, meaning possible sales, and says Reddit reached over 650 target accounts and that this exposure influenced over $1M in created pipeline. It was measured by Octane11 in a Reddit alpha program. There’s no budget on the page and no comparison channel.
Rework’s guide to pipeline reporting defines influenced pipeline as deals that started elsewhere but included a marketing touch along the way. As the guide puts it, influenced attribution “is a correlation, not causation.” The case study doesn’t spell out Octane11’s exact counting rules.
How Reddit counts a sale by default
Reddit’s default setting credits a sale to an ad up to 28 days after someone clicks it, and up to 1 day after someone only sees it. Reddit gives its own example. If someone sees your ad without clicking and buys from your site within a day, that counts. You can switch to click-only, and pick 1, 7 or 28 days.
Google calls the see-but-don’t-click kind a view-through conversion, and keeps it out of its main conversions column.
If you test Reddit, set it to click-only before you launch, and check its numbers against your own analytics and call tracking.
Question 3: Who Measured It?
Then I got to MSC Industrial. Its case study reports a 21.5X return on ad spend. The small label under it says “Client Internal,” which means MSC reported it themselves.
Return on ad spend is recorded sales value divided by ad spend. So 21.5X means $21.50 in sales recorded for every $1 of ads, before the cost of the products, and counting whatever sales the platform credited. The page shows no spend, no revenue and no comparison.
Here’s who measured each of the four, as labeled on Reddit’s pages:
| Case | Headline number | Measured by |
|---|---|---|
| Vitamix | 2X more purchases | Reddit’s ads dashboard and brand-lift study |
| Just Global | $1M influenced pipeline | Octane11, in a Reddit alpha program |
| MSC Industrial | 21.5X return on ad spend | ”Client Internal” (the advertiser) |
| Northwest Registered Agent | 50% lower cost per lead vs goal | ”Client Internal” (the advertiser) |
Every one was measured by Reddit, the advertiser, or a partner in Reddit’s own test program.
Question 4: Does This Business Look Anything Like Mine?
By the time I’d read all four, I’d noticed something they had in common. Look at who they are. Vitamix is a national kitchen brand, Just Global is a B2B agency working a list of target accounts, MSC is a North American distributor of industrial supplies, and Northwest Registered Agent is a national online service. Not one of them is a local business or a professional services firm.
We looked beyond the four, too. In October 2026 we opened four of Reddit’s industry pages for success stories: construction and home improvement, real estate, financial services and restaurants. None showed a law firm, a contractor, a home-services company or a single-location business. The closest to local was StreetEasy, a New York and New Jersey listings site, measured on site visits, not leads.
For a case study to mean something to a local firm, it would need one metro area, real spend, a lead count and a cost per lead. That’s the one to ask the rep for.
What Other Reddit Advertisers Have Reported
The four the rep sent were the ones Reddit chose to show me, so I went looking for other advertisers’ experiences, good and bad.
More of Reddit’s own case studies. A few of these do compare Reddit against something. Policygenius, a national online insurance marketplace, reports a return on ad spend 2X “higher than other platforms,” but the page doesn’t name the platforms or show the numbers. Culligan ran two kinds of Reddit campaign side by side for 21 days and got a 16% lower cost per click from one of them, measured by Reddit, with no leads or sales reported. Montana Fire Pits, a fire pit maker sold nationwide, reported 30% more contractor signups in the three months after it switched campaign types, using its own data. All three are national advertisers.
Marketers who told a reporter about their tests. Zapier interviewed people who had run Reddit ads, including software companies that reported good results. A fractional CMO reported over 210 qualified signups on a $4,000 budget for a B2B software client, a customer acquisition cost of about $18. Cirrus Bridge reported spending $1,500 over two weeks for roughly 200,000 impressions, 2,300 clicks and 150 signups. Animoto reported clicks at $1.58 each. Moss Technologies, which sells software to real estate investors, reported spending $100 over two weeks and getting one conversion, which covered the cost.
The same article also has warnings. Chargeblast’s CEO said broad targeting “underperformed and quickly ate up the budget.” Harry Bashir of Rev said Reddit users “are particularly sensitive to overtargeting and tend to hold anti-advertising views.”
A founder who stopped. A solo software founder posted on X in April 2026 about pausing Reddit ads: “Didn’t see any real results (just 2 signups, no conversions).” The founder planned to keep using Reddit without paying for ads.
Every good result here was reported by the advertiser or measured by Reddit, and every one came from a software company or a national brand. I didn’t find one from a local service firm.
What Do Reddit Ads Cost to Test?
Even if one of those advertisers had been a local firm, I’d still have had to find out what a test costs. You’ll see three numbers for that, and they’re three different kinds of statement.
| Figure | Where Reddit says it | What kind of statement |
|---|---|---|
| ”start as little as $5 per day” | Reddit’s article for small businesses | Marketing copy |
| ”Each ad group should have a daily budget of at least $50” | Reddit’s help center, standard campaign setup | Advice on splitting a budget |
| ”$100+/day for at least one week and up to two” | Reddit’s guide to ad costs | Suggested test level for sales and leads |
The $5 figure is from Reddit’s article for small businesses. The $50 tip sits on Reddit’s campaign setup page, under “Don’t spread yourself too thin.” The $100-a-day test level is in Reddit’s guide to ad costs, for campaigns aimed at sales and leads.
By our math, $50 a day for 30 days is about $1,500 a month for each group of ads. That’s our calculation, not Reddit’s.
We didn’t find a hard dollar minimum on Reddit’s budgets and bidding help page. We didn’t open Ads Manager itself, which may set one. The same page notes an ad group can overspend its daily budget by up to 20%.
If $1,500 a month for one group of ads is more than you’d put into a test, you already have your answer.
Who Reddit Ads Fit, and Who They Don’t
So who should try Reddit ads? If your customers share a hobby or a job title across the country, Reddit can work. If they share a ZIP code, I haven’t seen evidence that it does.
Where it fits. Reddit’s own small-business article says its community targeting makes it “ideal for niche or enthusiast oriented brands.” A video from the B2B marketing firm MKT1 gives two tests. Your audience has to actually spend time on Reddit; the speaker reports match rates as high as 70% for developers, engineers and IT, and as low as 4% for VPs of finance. And you shouldn’t expect Reddit to work as a last-click sales channel.
Where it doesn’t. Reddit reads location from the viewer’s IP address when the ad is served, and its help page warns that complete geolocation accuracy isn’t guaranteed. You can target countries, regions, US metro areas (designated market areas) or up to 20,000 ZIP codes per ad group, depending on the market. We found no radius option on the help pages we read. The same small-business article says “Reddit campaigns can take longer to produce measurable results” and describes the channel as warming up audiences “before they convert elsewhere”.
To be fair, Reddit’s small-business article does pitch local use, with sample targeting keywords like “best local moving company”. People do ask Reddit for local recommendations, and I read those threads for the words customers use about their own problems.
That’s why I shelved Reddit ads for my local and legal clients but kept reading Reddit. I just don’t pay to put ads next to those conversations yet.
If a Reddit rep has pitched you and you’d like a second opinion before you spend, book a free strategy session with me.
FAQ
How many people use Reddit in the US?
For the second quarter of 2026, Reddit reported an average of 53.2 million US daily active uniques and 197.2 million weekly. “Uniques” is Reddit’s count of unique visitors, and the daily figure includes 30.1 million who weren’t logged in. We didn’t find a published count for any single city.
How long should a Reddit ads test run?
For a standard campaign test, Reddit’s help center recommends at least four weeks, at least two ad groups, checking Ads Manager about once a week, and aiming for a click-through rate around 0.1% to 0.3%. At the $50-a-day tip, two ad groups for four weeks comes to about $2,800. That’s our calculation.
Can you change Reddit’s attribution settings after launch?
You can change the reporting window in your attribution settings, and the view window can’t be longer than the click window. For a standard sales or leads campaign, Reddit says the pixel, conversion goal and optimization window can’t be changed after setup. Pick click-only reporting and the right goal before you launch.
