Arizona Department of Health Services
Creatively Targeting an Audience With Paid Media
Reddit is an ideal platform to share public health messaging with an audience that may not be comfortable searching elsewhere for support. The anonymity of Reddit, compared with other social platforms, allows users to explore sensitive topics without shame.
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Challenge
As part of their goal to improve health and wellness, Arizona Department of Health Services was looking to increase awareness of, and provide resources for, substance use disorder and HIV prevention.
However, many digital media platforms prohibit, or severely restrict, advertising around medical conditions and treatment. There are also few targeting options to reach impacted audiences, due to user privacy concerns.
Strategy
While Meta and Google limit personalized targeting options, it is critical for advertisers to adapt and find new paths to deliver public health messaging to at-risk audiences.
Reddit has emerged as an ideal platform for sharing sensitive messaging within a privacy-centric environment. The relative anonymity of Reddit users gives them freedom to explore topics they wouldn’t feel comfortable searching elsewhere.
Solution
We found that much of our target audience was on Reddit, and many were already using the platform to anonymously ask questions and find resources regarding substance use disorder and HIV prevention. Even better, advertising on Reddit is less costly than paid search.
Approach
We created a static image ad for each campaign in both English and Spanish, customizing the audience for each, and ushering leads to ADHS’ website. Based on research regarding our target audiences, we served the HIV prevention ad to our primary audience of males 18-24 with an interest in dating content, and the substance use disorder ad to pregnant women and mothers.
29
% of website trafficResults
Both campaigns outperformed industry benchmarks, with over 4.5 million impressions and almost 14,000 clicks; it was responsible for 29% of all of ADHS’ website traffic during the course of the campaigns. The HIV campaign received a click-through rate of three times the industry benchmark while the click-through rate was double the industry benchmark for the substance use disorder ad.