Reddit MAX Campaigns: AI-Powered Automation with Open-Box Reporting
Reddit has launched MAX campaigns, a new AI-powered campaign type designed to automate targeting, creative selection, placements, and budget allocation—while delivering what Reddit calls "open-box reporting" in contrast to the limited audience transparency often associated with fully automated campaigns on other platforms.
Available now in beta for traffic and conversion objectives, MAX campaigns represent Reddit's answer to Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+ campaigns. But unlike those automation-first systems that abstract audience detail, Reddit is positioning MAX campaigns as a way to improve performance and provide clearer audience insights powered by Reddit Community Intelligence™.
According to Reddit's official announcement, across 17 split tests comparing MAX campaigns to standard setups, early alpha testers saw impressive results: 17% lower cost per acquisition (CPA) and 27% more conversions on average compared to business-as-usual campaigns. Separately, Brooks Running reported a 37% decrease in cost per click and 27% more clicks over a 21-day campaign without making any manual changes.
For performance marketers managing Reddit campaigns—or considering Reddit as part of their paid media mix—understanding how MAX campaigns work, what makes them different, and when to use them is critical heading into 2026.
Also read The 10 Essential AI Marketing Tools for Performance Creative Optimization in 2026.
Key Takeaways
Reddit MAX campaigns automate targeting, creative selection, placements, and budget allocation using AI that predicts the value of every ad impression powered by Reddit Community Intelligence™
Performance results from split testing show 17% lower CPA and 27% more conversions compared to standard campaigns (based on 17 tests conducted between June and August 2025)
"Open-box reporting" differentiates MAX from other platforms by providing new audience insights like Top Audience Personas, which use AI to cluster audiences into relevant personas (e.g., new parents, ambitious home cooks)
Available now in beta for traffic and conversion campaigns for select advertisers (recommended to check Ads Manager for access)
Creative automation tools include AI headline generation (using trending Reddit lingo), thumbnail generation for conversation placements, and upcoming AI-based video cropping
Compared to Performance Max and Advantage+, Reddit emphasizes audience context over pure efficiency, helping advertisers understand who is driving results and what they care about
Best treated as a controlled test for advertisers already running Reddit campaigns—run MAX alongside existing setups to evaluate where automation improves efficiency
What Are Reddit MAX Campaigns?
MAX campaigns are Reddit's automated campaign type for improved performance and streamlined campaign management. Powered by Reddit Community Intelligence™ and AI that predicts the value of every ad impression, MAX campaigns optimize campaign settings in real-time to drive better performance with less manual work.
According to Reddit's official blog post, MAX campaigns deliver "results and campaign insights that aren't possible with manual setups."
Core Automations
MAX campaigns automate several decisions advertisers typically make manually:
Audience targeting - Analyzes signals like ad creative, landing page content, and user behavior to find the most relevant audience for each ad
Creative selection and rotation - Automatically selects the best combination of headlines, creatives, and CTAs for each impression
Placements - Considers ads from each of Reddit's placements, only delivering when expected to perform well for a given impression
Budget allocation - Automatically distributes budget across the campaign to optimize performance
All of these automations operate within guardrails defined by the advertiser, according to Search Engine Journal's analysis.
Powered by Reddit Community Intelligence™
What makes MAX campaigns unique is the underlying data source: Reddit Community Intelligence™, which draws from more than 23 billion posts and comments to help predict the value of each ad impression in real time.
This allows campaigns to adjust delivery dynamically as performance data changes, rather than relying on static rules or frequent manual intervention.
Performance Results: What Early Testers Saw
Reddit has been alpha testing MAX campaigns with over 600 advertisers across verticals and business sizes in 2025. The performance data is compelling.
Split Test Results
According to Reddit's announcement, across 17 split tests conducted between June and August 2025 comparing MAX campaigns to advertisers' business-as-usual campaigns:
17% lower cost per acquisition (CPA)
27% more conversions on average
Reddit's product page emphasizes that each test compared MAX campaigns to standard campaigns over a 21-day period.
Case Studies
Brooks Running
In a MAX campaign promoting the launch of their Ghost 17 running shoe, Brooks Running saw:
37% decrease in cost per click
27% more clicks
No manual changes made over the course of the 21-day campaign
Big Fig
To drive sales of their mattresses for plus-size sleepers, Big Fig ran a 21-day MAX traffic campaign and saw:
41% increase in click-through rate
29% decrease in cost per click
Cozey
Performance Marketing Manager Alexandra Mota shared: "Max campaigns quickly became one of our most efficient levers for acquiring new customers efficiently on platform. We saw stronger ROAS and lower CPA without needing to constantly rebuild audiences or tweak optimizations."
DeepL
DeepL used a 21-day MAX campaign with high-volume creative to drive awareness and adoption of their API among organizations and developers.
Enthusiast Gaming
Enthusiast Gaming drove new memberships for The Sims Resource using high-volume creative and AI-powered optimization, which reduced cost per purchase and boosted purchases.
Key Features of Reddit MAX Campaigns
1. Smart Creative Asset Selection
According to Reddit's blog, advertisers provide many headlines, creative assets, and CTAs, and MAX campaigns automatically select the best combination for each impression. This helps increase creative volume while reducing creative fatigue.
2. Automated Targeting with Controls
Automated targeting on Reddit analyzes signals such as ad creative, landing page content, and user behavior to find the most relevant audience for each ad.
Advertisers can provide:
Audience suggestions: Communities, keywords, interests, custom audience inclusions
Audience constraints: Locations, custom audience exclusions, brand safety settings
This gives advertisers control over guardrails while allowing AI to optimize within those parameters.
3. Multi-Placement Optimization
MAX campaigns consider ads from each of Reddit's placements, only delivering to a given placement when it is expected to perform well for a given impression. This ensures budget flows to the highest-performing placements automatically.
4. Automated Budget Allocation
MAX campaigns leverage lowest cost bidding and campaign budget optimization so budget is automatically distributed to the best opportunities. Target cost bidding is also available.
5. Automated Bidding
Bids are adjusted automatically to minimize cost per result, removing the need for manual bid management.
6. Reddit-Ready Creative Tools
To help advertisers leverage Reddit's unique placements and formats, MAX campaigns can optionally leverage creative generation features:
AI Headline Generation
Headline suggestions provide advertisers with headline ideas that use trending Redditor lingo. This helps ads feel native to Reddit's conversational environment.
Thumbnail Generation
Thumbnail generation converts advertisers' large-format images to simpler images better fit for Reddit's conversation placement.
AI-Based Video Cropping (Coming Soon)
Reddit will soon launch AI-based video cropping to make it easier to bring videos from other platforms and adapt them for Reddit's formats.
Open-Box Reporting: How MAX Campaigns Are Different
Where automated campaigns on platforms like Google and Meta often limit visibility into performance, Reddit is taking a different approach: "opening the automation black box."
As Search Engine Journal notes, "Where Google and Meta largely optimize toward outcomes while abstracting audience detail, Reddit is attempting to pair automation with clearer audience context."
Top Audience Personas
Top Audience Personas are a new reporting feature only available in MAX campaigns. Top Audience Personas is now available for MAX campaigns. With this feature, AI clusters the campaign's audience into relevant personas (think new parents or ambitious home cooks) and allows advertisers to see:
Which personas are viewing and interacting with their campaign the most
What those personas are interested in right now
According to Reddit's announcement, "What makes these insights unique is that they combine an advertiser's campaign performance with Reddit Community Intelligence™, which turns Reddit's 23+ billion posts and comments into structured signals that help advertisers better understand their audiences."
Additional Reporting Features
In addition to Top Audience Personas, MAX campaigns provide:
Campaign performance by audience persona
Placement & device insights
Asset reporting across campaigns
Top asset combinations
Top interests
Top communities
These insights are powered by AI and provide cross-campaign creative asset reporting and the same performance breakdowns available to standard campaigns, plus the unique persona-level insights.
How Reddit MAX Campaigns Compare to Performance Max and Advantage+
Search Engine Journal's analysis provides valuable context on how MAX campaigns fit within the broader landscape of AI-driven campaign automation.
Similar Directional Shift
Platforms like Google and Meta have spent the last several years pushing advertisers toward AI-driven campaign types that consolidate targeting, creative, and bidding into a single system. Performance Max, Advantage+, and similar offerings have become the default recommendation for scaling efficiency.
Reddit's MAX campaigns follow that same directional shift, according to Search Engine Journal.
Notable Difference: Audience Context
Search Engine Journal notes a key differentiator:
"On Google and Meta, advertisers often evaluate AI campaigns based on aggregate performance metrics alone, with limited insight into who is driving results beyond high-level breakdowns. Reddit is positioning Max campaigns as a way to automate delivery while still helping advertisers understand which types of users are engaging, what they care about, and how conversations influence response."
Top Audience Personas reflect this approach. Instead of relying solely on predefined segments or modeled interests, Reddit uses community and conversation signals to surface patterns in how real users engage with ads.
These insights are not meant to replace targeting decisions, but to inform creative strategy, messaging, and where Reddit fits within a broader media mix.
For Advertisers Cautious of Black-Box Automation
According to Search Engine Journal:
"For advertisers who have grown cautious of automation that prioritizes efficiency at the expense of understanding, this added layer of insight may be the differentiator."
When to Use Reddit MAX Campaigns
Based on the official documentation and expert analysis, here's when MAX campaigns make sense:
Best Use Cases
According to the case studies shared by Reddit, MAX campaigns work well for:
Product launches (Brooks Running's Ghost 17 shoe)
eCommerce sales (Big Fig mattresses, Enthusiast Gaming memberships)
B2B adoption (DeepL API awareness and adoption)
Customer acquisition (Cozey furniture and home goods)
Traffic and conversion objectives (the two objectives currently supported)
When to Test MAX vs. Standard Campaigns
"For advertisers already running Reddit campaigns, this is best treated as a controlled test. Running Max campaigns alongside existing setups can help clarify where automation improves efficiency and where hands-on input, especially around creative and community fit, still matters."
Creative and Message Alignment Matter More
"Advertisers coming from Performance Max or Advantage+ should expect familiar mechanics, but different signals. Reddit's value is tied to conversation and context, so creative testing and message alignment will likely play a larger role than pure audience tuning."
Understanding Creative Performance in MAX Campaigns
While MAX campaigns automate creative selection and provide asset performance reporting, understanding why certain creative elements drive results requires deeper analysis.
Reddit's asset reporting shows which creative combinations perform best, but for advertisers running creative across multiple platforms—Meta, Google, TikTok, and Reddit—the question becomes: What creative patterns work across channels, and which are Reddit-specific?
This is where platforms like Segwise add value. While Reddit's MAX campaigns optimize creative delivery on Reddit, Segwise analyzes creative performance across 15+ ad networks including Reddit, using multimodal AI to automatically tag creative elements like hook dialogues, visual styles, CTAs, emotions, audio components, and even interactive elements in playable ads.
By mapping these tags to performance metrics (ROAS, CPA, conversion rates) across all platforms, Segwise helps you identify which creative elements consistently drive performance—and which platform-specific variations to test. Instead of managing creative insights separately for Reddit MAX campaigns, Meta Advantage+, Google Performance Max, and TikTok, you get unified creative intelligence that saves 20+ hours per week on analysis and enables data-driven creative decisions.
How to Get Started with Reddit MAX Campaigns
Availability
According to Reddit's announcement, MAX campaigns launched in beta for traffic and conversion campaigns to select advertisers.
Top Audience Persona reporting is now available.
How to Create a MAX Campaign
To create a MAX campaign, choose the Traffic or Conversions objective when creating an Advanced Create campaign in Reddit Ads Manager.
Reddit's Ads Formula guide provides step-by-step instructions on:
How to create a MAX campaign
How to review MAX campaign performance
For detailed creation steps and best practices, Reddit recommends reviewing their help documentation.
Setup Considerations
Based on Reddit's documentation, when setting up MAX campaigns:
Provide multiple creative assets - Headlines, creative, and CTAs for smart asset selection
Set audience suggestions - Communities, keywords, interests, custom audiences to guide targeting
Define audience constraints - Locations, exclusions, brand safety settings as guardrails
Leverage creative tools - Use AI headline generation and thumbnail generation to optimize for Reddit's formats
Allow the learning period - Case studies ran for 21 days without manual changes
Conclusion
Reddit MAX campaigns represent a significant evolution in how advertisers can run campaigns on the platform. By automating targeting, creative selection, placements, and budget allocation while providing "open-box reporting" with unique audience insights, MAX campaigns address two critical advertiser needs: efficiency and understanding.
Early performance data is compelling—17% lower CPA and 27% more conversions on average compared to standard campaigns. Case studies from brands like Brooks Running, Cozey, and Big Fig demonstrate meaningful improvements in cost per click, click-through rates, and ROAS.
What sets MAX campaigns apart from Performance Max and Advantage+ is Reddit's emphasis on audience context. Top Audience Personas and other AI-powered insights help advertisers understand not just that campaigns are performing, but who is driving results and what they care about—powered by Reddit Community Intelligence™ drawn from 23+ billion posts and comments.
For performance marketers managing Reddit campaigns, the recommendation is clear: test MAX campaigns alongside existing setups to evaluate where automation improves efficiency and where hands-on creative and community alignment still matter.
As you scale creative testing across Reddit MAX campaigns and other automated systems, platforms like Segwise help you understand which creative elements consistently drive ROAS across all ad networks—automatically tagging and analyzing creative performance so you spend less time compiling data and more time making data-driven creative decisions that improve results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Reddit MAX campaigns?
Reddit MAX campaigns are Reddit's AI-powered automated campaign type for traffic and conversion objectives. They automate targeting, creative selection, placements, and budget allocation using AI that predicts the value of every impression, powered by Reddit Community Intelligence™ drawn from more than 23 billion posts and comments.
How do Reddit MAX campaigns perform compared to standard campaigns?
According to Reddit's official data, across 17 split tests conducted between June and August 2025, MAX campaigns delivered 17% lower cost per acquisition (CPA) and 27% more conversions on average compared to advertisers' business-as-usual campaigns. Each test compared MAX campaigns to standard campaigns over a 21-day period.
What is "open-box reporting" in Reddit MAX campaigns?
Open-box reporting refers to Reddit's approach of providing detailed audience and creative insights rather than limiting visibility like some automated campaigns on other platforms. This includes Top Audience Personas (AI-clustered personas like "new parents" or "ambitious home cooks"), campaign performance by audience persona, placement and device insights, asset reporting, top asset combinations, top interests, and top communities.
What are Top Audience Personas in MAX campaigns?
Top Audience Personas are a reporting feature only available in MAX campaigns, and is now live. AI clusters the campaign's audience into relevant personas and allows advertisers to see which personas are viewing and interacting with their campaign the most, as well as what those personas are interested in right now. These insights combine campaign performance with Reddit Community Intelligence™ to help advertisers better understand their audiences.
How do Reddit MAX campaigns compare to Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+?
According to Search Engine Journal's analysis, Reddit MAX campaigns follow the same directional shift toward AI-driven automation but with a notable difference: while Google and Meta optimize toward outcomes while abstracting audience detail, Reddit pairs automation with clearer audience context. Reddit uses community and conversation signals to surface patterns in how real users engage with ads, helping advertisers understand creative strategy and messaging implications—not just aggregate performance metrics.
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