At Statuz, we help creators and businesses manage their social media presence more effectively. As part of our commitment to transparency and helping others make informed decisions, we recently ran a week-long campaign on Reddit's advertising platform. What we discovered was shocking - and we have concrete data to prove it.

This article isn’t a rant. It’s a practical guide to protecting your ad spend, diagnosing suspicious traffic, and building a measurement setup you can trust—no matter which ad platform you use. We include our Reddit case study as an example, but the advice is broadly applicable.

What you’ll get here:

• A simple, vendor-agnostic measurement blueprint you can implement this week
• A pre-flight checklist to run before judging any campaign
• Red flags that indicate bot or low-quality traffic
• A clean test plan for $100–$300 budgets
• Steps to take if you suspect invalid traffic

The Claims vs. Reality

Reddit's advertising dashboard showing suspiciously high engagement metrics. Note the reported 161 clicks and nearly 27,000 impressions for a relatively small spend.

We recently ran a 4 days campaign on Reddit's advertising platform. The campaign consisted of a single carousel ad with multiple images. Our ad copy was straightforward: "Mac creators: Cross-post to X, Bluesky & Mastodon in one click. Statuz is a fast macOS menu bar app with support for threads, media, and multiple accounts." The ad linked directly to our download page. Since Statuz is free to try, there was zero risk for potential users.

According to Reddit's advertising dashboard, our campaign achieved:

• 26,857 impressions
• 160 clicks
• $0.57 CPC (Cost per Click)
• 0.596% CTR (Click-Through Rate)
• Total spend: $91.95

These numbers looked promising at first glance. However, our first-party analytics told a completely different story.

The Truth in the Data

UserPath's analytics dashboard showing the real picture: only 93 new users total across ALL traffic sources during the same period, with significantly lower engagement metrics. Note that this includes ALL traffic sources, not just Reddit ads, making the discrepancy even more concerning.

Using UserPath, a privacy-focused analytics tool with first-party integration capabilities and AI-powered insights, we tracked the actual user engagement from Reddit ads. Here's what we found:

Let's break down what our analytics tool revealed:

• Only 43 unique users visited our site from Reddit ads since August 5th
• These users generated approximately 80 sessions across all tracked URLs
• Most traffic landed on our main marketing page, but with suspiciously repetitive patterns:
  • 28 visits came from just 3 unique users
  • Other landing pages received 7-9 visits each, but almost always from just 1 unique user
  • Nearly 60% of Reddit ad sessions lasted less than 10 seconds

You can check the full chat with AI here for more details.

Before You Blame the Platform: Sanity Checks

Run these quick checks to make sure you’re not misattributing a performance issue to the platform when it’s actually a setup or creative problem:

• Targeting: Are you using a narrowly relevant audience? Over-broad or novelty-based targeting can spike low-intent traffic.
• Creative-message fit: Does the ad clearly describe the offer and who it’s for? Overly generic hooks invite curiosity clicks.
• Landing page continuity: Does the headline match the ad promise and lead with the core value prop in the first screenful?
• Load time: Is Largest Contentful Paint under ~2.5s for mobile? Slow pages inflate bounces.
• Friction: Is there a single, clearly visible call to action? Remove extra links that siphon intent.
• Tracking health: Do you see normal, human-like distributions of session duration, scroll depth, and unique users per city/device?

How to Set Up Reliable Measurement (Vendor-Agnostic)

Use this blueprint regardless of your analytics vendor:

1. First-party collection
   • Serve the analytics script and endpoints from your own domain/subdomain (e.g., api.yourdomain.com) to reduce blocking and keep data private.
2. Dual tracking
   • Client-side events (page views, clicks, scrolls) + server-side events (key conversions) for better attribution and validation.
3. Consistent attribution
   • UTM standards on every ad link. Example: ?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=launch&utm_content=creative_a.
4. Event schema
   • Define a minimal, durable schema: page_view, cta_click, signup_start, download, purchase with timestamps and identifiers.
5. Looking for robot visitors
   • You can spot robot visitors by watching for things that real people don't do:
     • Visiting pages super fast (faster than a human could read)
     • Not scrolling at all on the page
     • Visiting the exact same pages over and over
     • Coming from weird places or devices that don't make sense
     • Lots of visits happening really quickly from the same place

Tools: Any privacy-respecting, first-party friendly stack works. We’ve had good results with UserPath for this because it makes first-party collection and dual tracking straightforward, but use what fits your stack and compliance needs.

The Technical Implementation (Our Case Study)

To ensure our tracking was bulletproof, we implemented a comprehensive tracking solution using UserPath's first-party integration. This included both client-side tracking through their privacy-focused browser pixel and server-side tracking via their API integration. By utilizing UserPath's dual-tracking approach, we ensured that no legitimate user interactions were missed, even in cases where users might be using ad blockers or privacy-focused browsers. The first-party integration was particularly crucial as it allowed us to collect analytics data through our own domain, making it immune to common tracking preventions while maintaining user privacy.

The Smoking Gun

The most damning evidence comes from our conversion tracking:

1. Zero Downloads: Despite Reddit reporting 160 clicks, not a single user who came through the Reddit ads downloaded our app which is free to try.

2. Bot-Like Behavior: The traffic patterns showed clear signs of automated behavior:

   • Multiple visits from the same user in rapid succession
   • No meaningful engagement (scrolling, video plays, or other interactions)
   • High bounce rates with minimal time on page

3. Discrepancy in Numbers: Reddit claims 160 clicks, but our first-party analytics only detected 43 unique users. That's a 73% discrepancy!

Again, you can check the full chat with AI here for more details. If you think this report is made up, you can try UserPath for free and see for yourself.

Red Flags That Suggest Invalid or Low-Quality Traffic

• Many “clicks” but very few page views in first-party analytics (e.g., 100 clicks vs. <10 sessions)
• Session durations clustered under 3 seconds with no scroll or interaction
• Repetitive navigation patterns from the same IP ranges or ASNs
• Unnatural geography/device distributions (e.g., extreme concentration in a small city unrelated to targeting)
• Spiky, bursty traffic in short windows with no downstream conversions
• High unique click counts with no add-to-cart, signup start, or download events

If you see three or more of the above simultaneously, pause spend and investigate.

A Clean Test Plan for $100–$300

Test Setup:

• Pick one specific audience and message
• Use 1-2 ad variations only
• Limit daily spend to $20-30
• Track with UTM codes and a specific landing page
• Set clear goals (like $5 per download)
• Compare to normal traffic patterns

Success Metrics:

• At least 75% of clicks become real visits
• Less than 25% bounce rate
• 1 signup or click for every 10-20 visits
• Users are actually doing something useful on the site (e.g. clicking, scrolling, spending time, etc.)

Why Our Data is Reliable

Our analytics setup using UserPath ensures we're getting accurate, unfiltered data:

1. First-Party Integration: Our analytics runs through our own domain, making it very hard to block or track.

2. Server-Side Validation: We track events both client-side and server-side, ensuring we don't miss any real user interactions.

3. Comprehensive Event Tracking: UserPath automatically tracks:

   • Page views and navigation
   • Click interactions
   • Scroll depth
   • Form submissions
   • Video interactions
   • User activity patterns
   • Performance metrics

Also, since UserPath has AI built in, we can check very deep into the data and see what's going on. There're tons of metrics we could use prove our point, but we'll leave it at that for now.

If You Suspect Invalid Traffic

1. Collect evidence:

   • Screenshot platform metrics and timestamps
   • Export analytics data and IP logs
   • Record page performance stats

2. Test tracking:

   • Click your own ad to verify proper tracking
   • Check for any redirect issues

3. Report to support:

   • Share data showing the discrepancies
   • Request investigation and refund

4. Prevent future issues:

   • Tighten targeting and frequency caps
   • Monitor for bot activity

When Reddit Ads Might Still Make Sense

• Niche communities with clear product fit
• Well-targeted evergreen campaigns
• Retargeting existing audiences

But always proceed with caution, budget small, and scale only after passing the clean test plan above. Always check the data with a trusted analytics tool.

The Implications

This discovery raises serious concerns about Reddit's advertising platform:

1. Inflated Metrics: Reddit appears to be significantly inflating their click numbers, charging advertisers for non-existent or low-quality traffic.

2. Poor ROI: With zero conversions and mostly bot-like traffic, the actual cost per real user engagement is much higher than reported.

3. Lack of Transparency: There's no way to verify Reddit's reported numbers through their platform, making it difficult for advertisers to detect these discrepancies without proper third-party tracking.

Recommendations for Advertisers

If you're considering advertising on Reddit, we strongly recommend:

1. Implement Proper Analytics: Use a reliable first-party analytics solution like UserPath to track actual user engagement.

2. Monitor Traffic Patterns: Look for signs of bot activity and unusual user behavior patterns.

3. Track Real Conversions: Don't rely solely on platform metrics - implement your own conversion tracking. Server side tracking is key.

4. Start Small: Test with a minimal budget before committing to larger campaigns.

5. Standardize UTMs: Use consistent utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, and utm_content for every variant.

6. Dual-Track Key Events: Capture conversions client-side and server-side to validate integrity.

7. Know When to Stop: Set clear rules for when to pause your ads. For example, if less than half of the clicks are real people visiting your site, or if nobody is doing anything useful on your site after 50 visits, it's time to stop and check what's wrong.

Conclusion

Based on our experience and concrete data, we cannot recommend Reddit's advertising platform as a default channel. The significant discrepancy between reported and actual engagement metrics suggests issues that demand extra caution and rigorous validation. We’ve discontinued our Reddit spend for now and are sharing this framework so you can run safer experiments, regardless of platform.

Remember: trust your own telemetry. First-party analytics—whether implemented with UserPath or another privacy-first tool—are the most reliable way to separate signal from noise and protect your budget.