Before you can plan a Reddit campaign, you need to know what you are actually building. Reddit offers several ad types, and each one fits a different objective, funnel stage, and creative style. Pick the wrong format and even a perfect message underperforms. This is the complete rundown of Reddit ad types and formats, and when to reach for each.
The Foundation: Promoted Posts
Almost every Reddit ad you have ever seen is a Promoted Post. These appear in-feed and look like regular Reddit posts, which is exactly the point. They carry the standard Reddit affordances: users can upvote, downvote, comment, and share them.
That native behaviour is what makes Reddit advertising different. A Promoted Post that resonates can pick up organic upvotes and comments, which extends its reach beyond what you paid for. A Promoted Post that misreads the community picks up downvotes and hostile comments, which does the opposite. The format rewards getting the culture right.
Within Promoted Posts, several creative formats are available.
Format 1: Free-Form (Text) Ads
The simplest format: a headline and body text, no required image. Free-form ads work when your message is genuinely interesting on its own, when you are seeding a discussion, or when you want the ad to feel maximally native. They are also fast to produce and easy to test angles with.
Best for: conversation starters, thought-leadership angles, question-led hooks, rapid message testing.
Format 2: Image Ads
A single image plus headline. The workhorse of Reddit advertising. The image does the stopping and the headline does the selling. Native-looking imagery (screenshots, simple graphics, authentic product shots) far outperforms polished stock photography here.
Best for: most direct-response campaigns, product highlights, offers, and any message that benefits from a single strong visual.
Format 3: Carousel Ads
Multiple swipeable cards in a single ad, each with its own image and optional link. Carousels let you tell a sequential story, show several products, or walk through steps and features. On Reddit, they work best when each card genuinely earns the swipe rather than padding out a single idea.
Best for: product ranges, feature walkthroughs, before-and-after narratives, step-by-step explanations.
Format 4: Video Ads
Full video in-feed, typically autoplaying muted. Video suits product demos, brand storytelling, and anything that benefits from motion. Because most Reddit video is watched without sound, the first two seconds and burned-in captions decide whether it works.
Best for: demos, launches, brand-building, and audiences you want to move emotionally rather than just informationally.
Format 5: Takeovers (Premium Placements)
Reddit’s high-impact, reservation-based placements. These are the premium end of the catalogue.
- Front Page Takeover: your brand owns the ad placements on Reddit’s front page for a period, delivering massive reach.
- Category Takeover: ownership of ad placements within a specific set of communities or a content category.
- Trending Takeover: premium placement in the trending / search discovery area, catching users in a browsing-and-discovering mindset.
Takeovers are awareness instruments, not performance ones. They cost significantly more and are reserved for launches, tentpole moments, and brands with the budget to buy dominant share of voice.
Best for: major launches, large-brand awareness pushes, moments where reach at scale is the whole point.
The Conversation Placement
Beyond the format itself, Reddit lets you influence where in the experience your ad shows, including within the comments of relevant conversations. Placing an ad inside an active, on-topic thread puts your message exactly where attention already is. It is a placement decision that stacks on top of your format choice.
Which Format Should You Use?
Match the format to the objective:
- Awareness at scale: Takeovers, or Video and Image Promoted Posts run against broad, high-traffic communities.
- Consideration and engagement: Free-form and Image ads that spark genuine discussion, with active comment management.
- Conversion and direct response: Image ads and Carousels with clear value propositions and a strong call to action, backed by the Reddit Pixel.
- Storytelling and demos: Video, with captions and a hook in the first two seconds.
The safe default for most advertisers starting out is the single Image Promoted Post. It is cheap to produce, easy to test, and native to the feed. Prove your message there, then expand into carousel, video, and eventually premium placements as the account earns its budget.
The Takeaway
Reddit’s ad types are not interchangeable. Promoted Posts give you native, engageable formats (free-form, image, carousel, video) for the bulk of your work, while Takeovers give you premium reach for the big moments. Choose based on your objective and funnel stage, not on which format looks flashiest, and the format will amplify your message instead of fighting it.
Once you have chosen a format, the next question is the technical one: exact dimensions, file sizes, and character limits. That is the subject of our Reddit ad specs guide. If the question after that is what all of this will cost, we break the numbers down in how much Reddit ads cost, and if you would rather hand the whole channel over, that is what our Reddit Ads agency work covers.