self serve advertising on reddit is now open for business!

After having our new sponsored link program in beta for the last 3 weeks, we're happy to announce that we've worked the bugs out (famous last words) and are opening it up to all users. To get started, simply click on the new "self-serve advertising" link in the footer on the front page, or, for the lazy, go here.



All you need to get started is $20, a credit card*, and some time to skim our ToS (which can be summed up with: be nice, don't be sneaky, and don't try to advertise anything illegal). Ads require about 48 hours for processing and approval, so if you place an ad today (Wednesday) it can be live on reddit by Friday. You can include a thumbnail and can even elect to turn off commenting (but where's the fun in that?). Reddit will also provide you with traffic information for your ad:



We also hope that this will provide something that typically doesn't come along with other ways to advertise: feedback. The community can comment on your ad, providing the sort of feedback that would require most traditional advertisers to arrange for a focus group. If we have anything at reddit, it's strong opinions...

We're very excited to see what the community does with the sponsored link program. From the beginning of reddit it has always been about the content and conversations that made reddit the site we all love. We wanted to find a way to make advertising reflect this philosophy too, so we like to think of self-serve ads as advertisements by redditors, for redditors.

We'd also like to extend our thanks to our beta testers. We're glad to have been able to work with such an understanding (heroic?) bunch of users in situations where actual money was involved, and their feedback has been invaluable.

So don't take our word for how great this new self-serve advertising system is, here are some testimonials from beta testers:

"We don't normally do paid advertising (almost all of our clients are word of mouth referrals), but we'll be purchasing more ads on Reddit for sure...I almost didn't post this, because I want to keep the competitors away" -- subigo

"Advertising on the Reddit homepage is a great way to get social traffic to your site fast without having to play the social voting game. The program is still in beta but it’s definitely worth a shot once it launches"-- TJantunen

"The people who came to the site, actually signed up and spent some time over there, leaving a few reviews." -- filmaster

*Sorry, for legal reasons we are currently only accepting US credit cards.