Video on Reddit →
It’s been about a year since we started hosting native video on Reddit, and in that time the format has helped evolve conversations, content and community. Redditors are now posting and watching more video than we ever expected, and to understand the impact of video on Reddit, we turned to our data team for an in-depth analysis of viewing, posting and engagement stats.
Native Video is changing Reddit
Multimedia content, including video and GIFs, represents a major proportion of the content shared on Reddit; but about a year after launching native video hosting, it’s now the dominant way people are viewing and posting video content.
We’re already averaging more than 1 billion native video views per month, and since launching hosted videos, nearly a quarter of all videos posted to Reddit use our native player (now surpassing YouTube video links on-site). We’re now serving 400k hours of natively hosted video every day and more than 13 million hours of video monthly, a growth of 38% since the beginning of 2018.
Top viewed video on Reddit, with 2.2M views.
We also took a look at video performance across platforms and found that mobile and the redesign are driving native video adoption and views.
Since the beginning of 2018, Reddit video views on mobile have doubled — and as of August 2018, almost 70% of video consumption on Reddit occurs from our mobile apps.
The redesign has also been a significant driver for adoption for both video creators and consumers: The redesign has shown a 50% increase in video posts over old Reddit.
A growing medium for Content Creators
Native video is also proving to be a growing medium for Content Creators on Reddit. In August 2018 alone, redditors posted almost 1M videos to the site, a 31% increase from August 2017. Redditors are increasingly adopting the native video format. With more than 400K hours of natively hosted video published to Reddit every day, and more than 13 million hours of video monthly, we’ve seen a growth rate of 38% since the start of 2018. Since launching hosted videos, almost a quarter of those videos posted to Reddit use our native player, surpassing YouTube links.
Mobile apps drive adoption and views
Video growth is largely driven by mobile apps. As of last month, nearly 70% of all video consumption on Reddit occurs on our Android and iOS apps and in the last year, video consumption on mobile has doubled.
Video advertising on Reddit
We want our partners to make video a bigger part of their experience on Reddit, which is why we’ve invested in making video a more meaningful part of our advertisers’ experience on Reddit. With improved targeting, guaranteed views and more surrounding engagements, the results speak for themselves: Advertisers are seeing significant improvements in conversion, 2.3x, over non-video ads. Some campaigns have shown engagement jump 3-5x higher than a static post and view rates are in line with platforms like Facebook.
Further, Reddit’s beta video advertisers are seeing significant increases in key metrics such as brand favorability and purchase intent when compared with non-video ads. In fact, a recent study by Milward Brown indicates that Reddit Video is performing considerably better than industry averages for digital video advertising.
“We’ve been partnering with Reddit over the past two years measuring campaign performance, and during that time Reddit’s average performance has outperformed our benchmarks for both awareness and lower-funnel metrics. From these initial campaign results their new video product is on the same track, and advertisers should take notice.” – James Jarzab, Vice President at Kantar, Insights division.
For examples of video ad campaigns, check out our partners: Audi, Nintendo, Olympic channel, Hotel Artemis and Netflix.
Video and the community
Last but not least, our native video content aligns with our audience and communities, which is crucial for the success of video and authentic conversations on Reddit. With engagement on Reddit being self-selected and community-based, videos that perform well in each community varies by cultures and communication styles. For example, with 50% of our audience is under the age of 34, “snack sized” videos––AKA short and quick-consumption clips––are a trademark of how they share and communicate.
2nd-most viewed video on Reddit, with 1.8M views.
Where content and conversation coexist
Video and GIFs represent a major proportion of the content shared on Reddit and there’s never been a video comment system as strong as Reddit’s. With the launch of our native video hosting and player in August 2017, we’ve seen rich content and conversation continue to coexist within communities in a way that is authentic to Reddit and its thousands of communities.
Stay tuned for more product and community insights on our blog.