How useful are Reddit ads for promoting your game and how do you get started with it? This quick guide to Reddit ads will get your started!

Note: the majority of this guide comes from Eugene from Voidmaw Games, who has been testing out ads for his game Katanaut (please wishlist!), and I will never waste an opportunity to brag about the fact that he even inserted a Pirate PR NPC character in his game, and that is just the coolest thing ever:

He did a lot of trial and error, and used mostly common sense to come to his conclusions, and I’ve been sending his guide to some other devs as well, who also applied it with decent success.

He posted his guide to Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1ilr9w5/reddit_ads_postmortem_what_i_learned_after_2/, But I’ll be making some small edits to it below for readability purposes.

When is a Good Time to launch a Reddit Ad campaign?

If you have the budget for it, I’d say as soon as you have a decent landing page (Steam page) and the materials needed to send people there (good key art, good trailer, a game that can convince people to click on that wishlist button).

But if I had to pick two moments, it would be the weeks before and during Steam Next Fest, to boost your demo downloads. Especially with how much Steam cares about the results of the first 48hours to decide which games to spotlight the rest of the SNF week.

Important Sidenote: The Pirate PR games that were paying for Reddit ads like Katanaut and Ruffy and the Riverside, all made it into the top games of their respective genres during Steam Next Fest February 2025.

And the second time would be around your game’s launch, to push it into Popular Upcoming (if you still need the wishlist count for it) and New & Trending after its launch, so you can get to enough sales & reviews in the first ~48 hours after your launch.

Good to Know: Free Reddit Credit

Also, before getting into Voidmaw’s tips, Reddit usually has a promotion going where they offer 100% additional credit for up to €1500, for new accounts.

This is only when you add prepaid budget for ads, but it sounds like a good reason to invest €1500 upfront, and get a total of €3000 budget to play around with in Reddit advertisement credit!

Quicks Facts (from Voidmaw)

When Eugene first set up the ads based on what he had learned from other postmortems, he was paying around $1.70 per wishlist, with an overall CTR ( = Click-Through Rate) of 0.23%.

• After a call with the Reddit ads team (they reached out and offered a free consult over a call), he was able to fine-tune his targeting, bringing the cost per wishlist down to just over $1.
• The CTR more than doubled, reaching 0.4%+ overall, with certain communities hitting over 1.0% CTR. Everything he learned from them is sprinkled in the points below.

He’s been running Reddit ads nonstop ever since, and increases the budget around every marketing beat in the future.

1. Set Your Objective to “Traffic”

If you’re running ads for a game on Steam, go with Traffic. It optimises for clicks straight to your store page, where people can wishlist or download a demo. Don’t forget to add UTMs to your link
(like ?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=ad) to track wishlists in Steam’s analytics.

In Katanaut’s case, he started ads before a demo was ready, so the focus was on wishlists, linking directly to Steam. They worked surprisingly well. He switched to “try this demo now” when it was available. Just drive clicks and check Steam for results.

2. Leave most targeting options blank

This was a key piece of advice from other postmortem’s and the Reddit ads team. Avoid using:

• Keywords
• Custom Audiences
• Devices
• Brand Safety
• Interest Groups

Apparently, filling these in can throttle the algorithm in a way that hurts performance. You want to consider leaving this blank to not bottleneck the algorithm from attempting to figure out what works best by itself. By filling out any of the sections above, you’re effectively per-restricting the reddit algorithm in a bad way.

Most of the time, you’re already targeting the right audience, by placing the ads in very specific subreddits.

3. Choose the right subreddits

…and avoid the massive ones!

It’s tempting to target big subreddits like r/gaming or r/games, but that’s a mistake:

• CTR (click-through rate) drops quickly because the audience is too broad.
• You’ll get more accidental or uninterested clicks, which wastes money.

Instead, focus on smaller, niche subreddits, especially ones related to games similar to yours. This is the part of your reddit ads that you’ll update the most. Keep an eye on your CTR and adjust accordingly: remove subreddits that underperform and rotate in new ones to avoid exhausting the same audience.

Additionally, only consider some of the broader subs (gaming/games) if you feel like you’ve already exhausted some of the smaller subs that you’ve targeted. Voidmaw’s tactic here was finding other games that were similar to his (genre, setting, mood…) and attempting to target their subs.

Which ended up having the highest CTR(1%+) opposed to the broader subs. Here is an example of which subs he targeted for Katanaut, and keep in mind that these rotated often.

Pirate PR note: For Ruffy and the Riverside, we experimented a lot with other platforms and nostalgia. Like r/N64 or r/Retrogamers etc. Once you have platform specific trailers and assets, you can also start posting there, like r/NintendoSwitch or r/PlayStation.

4. Be intentional with demographics

If your game is translated into different languages, consider splitting your ads by region, and setting different cost caps for them. This is what Voidmaw did as an example, where he split his ads into two groups:

• One ad for English-speaking countries (US, Canada, UK, or countries where most people understand English just fine: Belgium, the Netherlands…)
• Another ad for non-English speaking regions

If you don’t set specific demographics, Reddit will optimize for the lowest bid costs, which might not be what you expect. When he initially left the demographics open, Reddit optimized his ads such that most of his wishlists came from the South-East Asian region. Not a bad thing, just something to be aware of as you rotate your ads through different subreddits and regions in the world.

So if you want to specifically target certain countries/regions, be sure to list them and be specific. What he ended up doing was targeting the countries that speak the languages which his game is specifically translated to (listed on his Steam page), and then having a separate ad that targeted anyone/everyone in the world.

Pirate PR note: Also keep in mind what you want people to do. Eg, getting wishlists seems to be more cost-effective in regions like Brazil or Russia, but they are notoriously bad at converting into sales unless there is a massive discount. But they might still be useful if your goal is growing your wishlists ASAP (say for example, if you want to have 8-10K+ for getting into Popular Upcoming and you need a last-ditch effort)

5. Never set an end date

Just turn the ads off manually when you’re done.

Why? The Reddit ads team advises that stopping and restarting an ad triggers a new “learning period” in their algorithm, meaning it has to warm up again. They estimate it takes 1-2 weeks to fully optimize.

Voidmaw’s data reflects this, and he did indeed see a “warm up” period in his wishlists as he ran the ads:

6. Time of day: just select everything

Let Reddit optimize when to show your ads. The times selected are local to the countries you’re targeting, so it balances out. Reddit will just run them 24/7 in regions where they perform best.

7. Use “Cost Cap” bidding

This is how you control how much you pay for each ad placement. If your bid is too low, your ad will show up less, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing: it can help you stretch your budget.

Here’s what worked for Voidmaw during his ad period, which may also change in the future:

• $0.20 bid for English-speaking countries
• $0.10 bid (minimum) for non-English-speaking countries

If his daily budget wasn’t being spent, he took it as a sign to slightly increase his cost cap. His goal was to spread the budget evenly throughout the day, so he was fine with lower bids, even if it meant fewer impressions. This approach kept his ads from feeling spammy. You’ve all seen the same game ads repeatedly while browsing Reddit right? And at some point that started to annoy you? So it’s best to avoid becoming an ad people hate to see the 10th time that week…

8. Image or Video Ads? Doesn’t matter: the thumbnail is key!

It doesn’t matter if you use an image or a video, the most important thing is making the first frame visually appealing.

• If you use an image, make sure it’s eye-catching.
• If you use a video, your thumbnail needs to be strong enough to make people stop scrolling.

For Katanaut, he used a video with his capsule art as the thumbnail, and it performed well. The video was just the default trailer, and the CTA (Call To Action) would link users to his Steam page via a UTM link.

Pirate PR note: thumbnails are important people, don’t just let social media platforms pick the first frame of your video (especially not when it’s a fade from black…) even if some platforms don’t let you manually pick a thumbnail (like non-paying Twitter or bluesky) you can cheat the system by inserting your CTA screen or title screen in the first few milliseconds! 🙂

9. Your headline shouldn’t sound like an ad

This is huge: your ad should look like a regular Reddit post, not a promotion.

Reddit ads blend seamlessly into the UI, which means your job is to make it feel natural. People are doom scrolling, and they’ll only stop if something genuinely catches their attention, and you want your post attractive enough for people to stop and take a look.

For Katanaut, Voidmaw went for something simple:
“A sci-fi roguelite with fast combat and eldritch horror.”

So:
– Avoid sounding like an ad
– Make your headline feel like a real post

10. Enable comments on your ad

Perhaps one of the most important suggestions in this entire article, but enable comments! The Reddit Ad team showed data suggesting that Reddit users respect ads that allow comments, as they felt more personable.

Most of the comments should be positive and you’ll actually get increased engagement from people being respectful for allowing comments.

What’s more, outside of conversions like wishlists or demo downloads, you might even get useful feedback from players that can still help you improve your game.

Pirate PR Note: You still have control over the comments, since it’s your posts. If they have justified criticism, leave it and engage in an appropriate manner. If the replies are mean or hateful, moderate them and delete as needed. (Make them walk the plank!)

Check out some of Katanaut’s public ads and their comments:

• https://www.reddit.com/user/VoidBuffer/comments/1i2v7w0/a_scifi_roguelite_with_fast_combat_and_eldritch/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/VoidBuffer/comments/1i2v8p3/a_scifi_roguelite_with_fast_combat_and_eldritch/

11. Track clicks with a UTM link

Use a UTM tracking link to see where your traffic/wishlists are coming from. You can quite literally use the one below, just swap out the AppId with your own, rename any of the parameters, and monitor it under your store page metrics:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3032830?utm_source=ad&utm_medium=red-us&utm_campaign=kde

12. Call-to-Action: pick the right one

• For wishlists → Use “Learn More”
• For demo/release → Use “Play Now”

13. Use a semi-personal Reddit account

Instead of making a brand-new Reddit account just for ads, the Reddit team suggested using a semi-personal account with some posting history.

The idea is simple: People trust ads more when they come from a real user. (with some existing karma). It also helps a ton if you use the account for more than just self-promotion. If you’re an active member of some communities and just talk to people like a human, not like a company hoping to sell them something, it helps in the public perception. (this advice also counts for other social media accounts, like Twitter and Bluesky)

14. An average CTR is 0.2%.

The Reddit team told Eugene 0.2% CTR is average for ads.

• Before speaking with them, he had a 0.23% CTR.
• After implementing their advice, he hit a combined CTR of 0.4, but it ranged between 0.8-1.4% when he started targeting smaller subs that might take an interest in Katanaut.

The biggest game-changer? Targeting niche subreddits and games similar to his own.

Final Thoughts

Running Reddit ads is a learning experience, but once you figure out how to make ads blend in naturally, engagement will be substantially higher.

If you’re planning to run ads for your game, and this article was too big to read, this is a short recap:

• Target niche communities
• Make your ad look like a real Reddit post
• Rotate demographics and bids based on performance
• Don’t be afraid to experiment (like turning on comments)

Massive thanks to Eugene from Voidmaw for sharing his insights, go check out Katanaut to show him your appreciation or give him a follow on Twitter 🙂

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