2026 PRELAUNCH GUIDE
Reddit Targeting for B2B SaaS: What to Set Up Before You Go Live
A setup guide covering your targeting options, audience configuration, and campaign structure so you're ready to go live with confidence.
1. Reddit Audiences
Define ICP: Write down your ICP (role, company size, pain points). Use this to guide all targeting choices.
Interest targeting: Select IAB categories that match your ICP (for example, Business and Finance for B2B SaaS buyers).
Treat interest targeting as a broad, upper funnel approach and combine it with communities or keywords for more precise targeting.
Community targeting: Target active subreddits. For example: r/SaaS, r/startups, r/Entrepreneur, r/marketing, r/growthhacking, or r/Sales.
Choose communities based on relevancy to your ICP, not just size. Use a mix of one large subreddit for reach and two or three niche subreddits for precision, depending on your budget and objective.
Keyword targeting: Research 5 to 15 keywords by using Reddit search inside relevant subreddits. Look at the posts and comments that appear for each keyword. Add the best terms to your targeting and avoid low intent terms such as “free” or “cheap”.
Automated targeting: Leave automated targeting off when you launch. Only turn it on later if you want to expand reach beyond your existing targeting and you are happy to accept lower control over who you reach.
2. Custom Audiences
Website retargeting: Install the Reddit Pixel across all pages, then configure conversion events on high-intent pages (pricing, demo request, feature comparison, case studies). Use these event-based audiences to build a combined "high-intent visitors" segment.
Once you have the volume to support it, then narrow to single pages.
Customer lists: Upload contact emails or MAIDs (Mobile Ad IDs). Sync from Zoho or Marketo.
Lookalike audiences: Use lookalike audiences only after you have a good quality seed (recent customers, high-value leads, or 1000+ pricing/demo page visits). Reddit requires a minimum of 1,000 matched users after the matching process.
Your uploaded list needs to be meaningfully larger than 1,000 to account for match rate drop-off.
Engagement retargeting: Retarget users who interacted with your ads. Use a 6-month window.
Exclusions: Upload lists of existing customers, current trial users and closed won deals. Exclude these audiences from your prospecting campaigns to avoid wasting spend.
3. Demographics
Location: Start with your ICP's primary markets first. For English-speaking B2B SaaS, common starting points are US, UK, Canada, Australia.
Don't limit to language alone, follow where your customers actually are. Refine by city or region if your product is limited to specific markets.
Gender: Filter only if your product targets a specific demographic.
Language: Default to English. Add German or French for EU markets.
4. Device & Carrier
Device: Choose mobile, desktop, or both. Set minimum OS version for apps.
Carrier: Target relevant mobile networks. US, UK, and EU providers are available.
App install exclusion: Automatically exclude existing app users. Track via MMP (Mobile Measurement Partner).
5. Brand Safety
Exclude: Block ads from sensitive or off-brand communities. Use Reddit safety controls.
Reddit has specific inventory type settings (Standard, Reduced, and Limited) that control which subreddits your ads can appear in based on content sensitivity.
6. Campaign Structure
Ad group structure:
Create separate ad groups for different targeting types (for example, one for communities, one for keywords, one for interest targeting).
Create separate ad groups for different targeting types (for example, one for communities, one for keywords, one for interest targeting).
OR logic:
Communities, interests, and keywords OR with each other: including multiple selections of the same type (for example, two or more communities). Custom audiences also OR with each other.
Communities, interests, and keywords OR with each other: including multiple selections of the same type (for example, two or more communities). Custom audiences also OR with each other.
These two groups cannot OR across the boundary: a Reddit audience type and a custom audience type can only be combined using AND logic.
QUICK REFERENCE
✓ r/devops OR r/sysadmin OR "enterprise software" OR "cloud migration" all qualify independently
✓ Website visitors AND r/devops - valid as AND overlay
✗ Website visitors OR r/devops - cross-group OR is not supported
Attempting to combine across groups defaults to AND behaviour, so misreading this as OR will restrict reach more than intended. When in doubt, keep Reddit audiences and custom audiences in separate ad groups.
AND logic:
The best way to get an AND effect is to combine a custom audience (eg. website visitors) with a Reddit audience type (eg. selected communities).
The best way to get an AND effect is to combine a custom audience (eg. website visitors) with a Reddit audience type (eg. selected communities).
AND only: Reddit audiences + Custom audiences can only be combined with AND logic, never OR.
7. Pre-Launch Validation
Audience estimates: Use Reddit’s audience size estimator. For prospecting, aim for roughly 50,000 to 500,000 users, depending on your budget and how niche your ICP is. Very small audiences may struggle to spend.
Test combinations: Use OR logic within groups. Use AND logic (overlay) when combining a custom audience with another targeting layer.
Budget: Set budget sufficient for audience size (for example, $50+ daily for 100k+ audiences). Underfunding limits delivery.
Pro Tip: Research where your ICP actually talks before selecting communities or keywords. Use Reddit Search, Reddit Trends, or a dedicated tool to find relevant subreddits. Install your Pixel before launch to optimise from real data from day 1.