How to See Your Competitors' Reddit Ads
Meta has an ad library. Google has one. TikTok has one. LinkedIn has one. Reddit? Nope. Nothing. If you want to see what your competitors are running on Reddit, there's no "click here to see all ads" button. You have to get creative.
And it's worth getting creative, because Reddit ads have quietly become one of the best B2B advertising channels. Targeting by subreddit means a cybersecurity vendor can show up exclusively in r/netsec, reaching people who actually care about security. Not LinkedIn's "interested in cybersecurity" audience, which includes every recruiter and career-changer on the platform.
Go Be a Target Customer
The dumbest-sounding approach is actually the most reliable. Make a Reddit account. Subscribe to the subreddits your customers use. Scroll your feed. Competitor ads show up as "Promoted" posts mixed in with organic content.
I know what you're thinking — that's wildly inefficient. And yeah, it is. You're basically hoping to stumble into ads while doomscrolling. But Reddit's targeting is subreddit-based, so if you're subscribed to the right communities, you'll see ads from companies targeting those communities. Over a week of casual browsing, I spotted ads from two competitors I didn't know were on Reddit.
When you see a competitor ad, screenshot it. Note which subreddit, what the creative looks like, what they're saying, and where the link goes. The landing pages often reveal more about positioning than the ad itself. Do this passively for a month and you'll have a reasonable picture of who's advertising on Reddit in your space.
The Paid Intelligence Route
A PPC competitor analysis agent can research competitor ad strategies across platforms. Reddit's lack of a public library limits what any tool can pull, but the agent identifies spend patterns and messaging themes from available data.
SimilarWeb's paid plans are sneaky useful here — they show referral traffic from reddit.com. If Competitor B gets 3% of their traffic from Reddit, they're clearly running ads or heavily active in organic communities. The traffic data confirms the investment even if you can't see the specific ads.
What the Ads Tell You
The subreddit where the ad appears tells you who they're targeting. Competitor B buying ads in r/sales and r/startups is going after SMB. Running in r/devops and r/sysadmin? They want technical buyers. The targeting is the strategy, said out loud.
The messaging is interesting because Reddit forces a different tone. Users on Reddit will absolutely roast an ad that sounds too corporate. Any competitor who's been running Reddit ads for a while has learned to sound human. Compare their Reddit ad copy to their LinkedIn ads — the gap between the two tells you which voice their audience actually responds to.
And here's the sneaky part: Reddit ads have comment sections. Redditors use those comment sections aggressively. I've found competitor product complaints, feature wishlists, and switching stories in the comments under promoted posts. Unfiltered customer sentiment, right there under the ad.
Beyond Ads: Reddit's Real Competitive Intelligence
Honestly? The ads are the less interesting part of Reddit competitive intelligence. The organic discussions are where the gold is.
Search Reddit for your competitor's name. Just type it into Reddit's search bar. The threads that come up — "Has anyone used [Competitor B]?" or "Switching from [Competitor B] to something else" — contain more honest competitive intelligence than 50 G2 reviews. Nobody is incentivized to be polite on Reddit. People just say what they think.
Set up a Google Alert for "[competitor name] site:reddit.com" and you'll get pinged when new discussions appear. Doesn't catch everything (Reddit's indexing is inconsistent), but it catches the threads worth reading.
Competitor traffic analysis tells you whether Reddit matters in a competitor's overall traffic picture. If it's 1%, they're probably not investing much. If it's 5%+, Reddit is a real channel for them and worth monitoring closely.
The Honest Assessment
Should you build a whole competitor intelligence workflow around Reddit ads? No. Reddit doesn't give you the tools to do it efficiently, and many B2B competitors aren't even advertising there.
Should you browse your target subreddits occasionally, screenshot any competitor ads you spot, and definitely read the organic threads about your competitors? Absolutely yes. The organic conversations on Reddit are some of the most honest public product feedback available anywhere. The ads are a bonus, not the main course.
Try These Agents
- PPC Competitor Analysis — Cross-platform paid advertising intelligence
- Competitor Traffic Analysis — Reddit referral traffic data
- Social Listening Alerts — Reddit and social conversation monitoring
- Brand Monitoring — Competitor mention tracking including Reddit