Highlights:

  • Spiketrap did not disclose the identity of the companies it has worked with, but the firm asserts that it has experienced strong demand in the areas it focuses on.
  • Through this acquisition, Reddit intends to incorporate the contextual analysis and engagement capabilities developed by Spiketrap, as well as the team responsible for developing those tools, into its advertising company.

Reddit announced the acquisition of Spiketrap, an audience intelligence and contextualization firm. The terms of the agreement were not revealed.

Reddit has become the most popular site for advertising, with more than 100,000 active communities and a broad spectrum of talks. The company has been working on methods to assist businesses in reaching relevant and engaged audiences. Now, as a part of the same endeavor, it is putting Spiketrap’s technology and personnel under its banner.

What does Spiketrap do?

Spiketrap is a company that provides businesses in the media and gaming sectors with customized audience analytics and media solutions. The company was established in 2016 and is headquartered in California.

The firm uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to extricate valuable signals from a wealth of unstructured datasets and provides audience insights, social media insights, competitive intelligence, and impact measurement to advertisers. According to the corporation, it provides an unprecedented level of audience clarity and context, particularly within the context of high-velocity internet settings.

Meanwhile, the media tools serve as the follow-up offering, enabling companies to act on that clarity and context to drive better engagement.

Spiketrap did not disclose the identity of the companies it has worked with as customers, but the firm asserts that it has experienced strong demand in the areas it focuses on. In addition, it successfully solicited seed capital from several investors in the year 2020, including Susa, 645, Pathbreaker, and Anorak.

How this is an excellent deal for Reddit

With this acquisition, Reddit intends to incorporate Spiketrap’s contextual analysis and engagement capabilities and the team responsible for creating those tools into its advertising company. The company explained that the move would improve its ability to target users with ads based on their conversations and interests on the platform and enhance ad-quality scoring and engagement prediction models for auto bidding. In addition, the move will improve the company’s ability to target users with ads based on their conversations and interests on the platform.

In the end, this will increase the relevancy of advertisements and how well they work on Reddit, providing a greater return on investment and superior solutions for advertising businesses.

Reddit spokesperson said, “We empower advertisers with the necessary tools to connect with relevant audiences and communities on Reddit. Spiketrap’s superior contextual NLP/ML [natural language processing/machine learning] technology is a great fit for our platform as we move into the next phase of our ads product strategy and expand our advertiser offerings.” The team from Spiketrap has already joined Reddit and will soon start supporting and spearheading projects across the ad business, the company noted.

Previous moves for Reddit’s ad business

Although it makes perfect sense for Reddit to buy Spiketrap, this is not the first time the business has made an acquisition. This is the latest in a series of acquisitions the company has undertaken to strengthen its advertising capabilities and improve user engagement. Before that, it had bought Spell, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) AI platform, to determine and classify the contextual significance of talks and personalize ad placements. Another noteworthy purchase was the natural language processing (NLP) business, MeaningCloud.

Shariq Rizvi, Reddit EVP of ads monetization, said, “We believe targeting relevant audiences based on interests, and with the context of the conversations they are engaging in, helps ensure advertisers reach the right people in the most efficient ways. We have been actively investing in solutions to this end for some time, and this acquisition will round out Reddit’s capability, taking it to the next level.”