In early 2024, Reddit’s SMB Growth Marketing team partnered with Right Side Up to transform its paid acquisition approach, evolving from fragmented campaigns into a cohesive engine for global growth.

The goal: build a unified system that could scale efficiently, deliver high-quality leads, and provide meaningful visibility into performance.

The Challenge

Reddit’s team was active across Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Microsoft, and Reddit Ads, but platform-level metrics varied widely, making optimization difficult.

Success definitions were inconsistent, and creative testing lacked cohesion, limiting performance insights.

They faced:

• Varying qualification standards across platforms and regions
  
• Rising acquisition costs due to increased competition in search and social auctions
  
• Isolated creative testing, making it difficult to identify which formats drove results
  
• Limited visibility into which leads were converting into active advertisers
  

The challenge was clear: create a scalable, data-driven acquisition model that prioritized lead quality, efficiency, and global consistency.

The Solution

Over the course of 18 months, Reddit and Right Side Up re-architected the paid media program, integrating performance data, streamlining creative strategy, and aligning all channels toward shared goals.

The transformation centered on four key pillars.

1. Unified Measurement Evolution

The team began 2024 optimizing toward qualified signups (advertisers who completed the registration process).

By mid-2025, Reddit shifted to marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) as the core success metric, enabling deeper optimization around lead quality.

This transition was supported by standardized tracking practices and full integration of all major ad platforms with HubSpot, giving the team centralized visibility into lead behavior across markets.

2. Creative and Testing Discipline

To support consistent performance across channels, Right Side Up and Reddit developed a centralized messaging framework for consistency across channels while leaving room for localized nuance.

They established a disciplined creative refresh cadence, revisiting and iterating top-performing assets every four to six weeks to stay ahead of ad fatigue and shifting auction dynamics.

Brand extensions, such as sitelinks and headline structures, were also standardized, improving user journeys and contributing to record-high click-through rates.

3. Channel-Specific Optimization

Each platform was re-positioned according to its strengths within the funnel.

• Google Search: The most consistent engine for high-quality leads and activations at a stable cost
  
• LinkedIn: Served as an education and nurture layer, contributing to stronger lead-to-activation rates
  
• Meta: Drove efficient reach and awareness through creative diversification and tighter cost controls
  
• Microsoft & Reddit Ads SMB: Supplemented overall reach while reinforcing Reddit’s platform authenticity

This clear channel delineation allowed budgets to be allocated more strategically and prevented overlap between audiences.

4. Operational Governance

To maintain momentum and support global scalability, the teams implemented structured operational discipline.

Weekly pacing dashboards aligned to shared goals and spend targets.

Agile budget reallocation protocols allowed Reddit to double total media spend year-over-year without compromising efficiency.

Strategies were continuously refined using real-time insights into lead quality, channel contribution, and downstream advertiser behavior.

The Impact

Reddit’s paid media strategy evolved into a sustainable, cross-channel growth engine driven by clarity, efficiency, and scale.

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Reddit’s growth marketing efforts resulted in several key strategic outcomes. 

First, the team established a unified acquisition framework, enabling all channels to optimize toward a shared conversion definition and a consistent lead quality metric.

This alignment created clearer benchmarks and more reliable performance insights. 

Second, they achieved predictable efficiency at scale, maintaining cost stability even as total media investment doubled. 

The RP team is a true collaborative engine; they truly feel like they are a part of our team. —Didier Bizimungu, Head of Performance SMB, Reddit

Finally, the program defined clear channel roles within the acquisition engine: Google served as the primary driver of intent, Meta expanded reach, LinkedIn focused on education and nurturing, and Reddit’s own SMB placements played a crucial role in validating prospects. 

Together, these outcomes reinforced a coordinated, scalable, and efficient approach to cross-channel growth.

Final Summary

With a unified strategy, strong governance, and disciplined creative execution, Reddit’s SMB team—partnering with Right Side Up—built a predictable, high-performing engine for advertiser acquisition across global markets.

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Ready to Build a Scalable Paid Media Engine?

Whether you’re wrangling disorganized campaigns, chasing better lead quality, or trying to grow without sacrificing efficiency, Right Side Up can help turn your paid media program into a smarter growth engine.

Contact us today to talk through your acquisition goals and challenges!

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