Reddit sent out a message to some subreddit Moderators yesterday asking us to take a survey. The survey itself was a lengthy Likert scale riddled piece that appears to be focused on how Reddit can compete against third-party tools with a lot of questions about if moderating subreddits helped me make friends (spoiler, no, no it doesn’t).

I took the survey diligently because I want Reddit to improve and win. However, the most interesting part of the survey to me was when Reddit revealed the categories they placed certain subreddits in. In total the survey had 15 master categories and 1 other category presented to me in likely a randomized order of:

1. Sports
2. Health and Fitness
3. NSFW
4. TV and Movies
5. Electronics and Technology
6. Lifestyle/Identity
7. Q&A/Discussion
8. Personal Finance
9. Fandoms
10. Food and Drink
11. Beauty/Fashion
12. News, Issues, Politics
13. Gaming
14. Image, GIF, and Video Sharing
15. Automotive
16. Other

If you’ve ever ran a Reddit Ads campaign you would know that in your ad settings you can target categories instead of subreddits and let Reddit figure out the subreddit targeting for you. The weird thing is that the list of subreddit categories provided by for this survey doesn’t always line up with the main categories available for ad targeting which are:

1. Animals & Pets
2. Art & Design
3. Automotive
4. Business & Finance
5. Entertainment
6. Family & Relationships
7. Food & Drink
8. Gaming
9. Healthy Living
10. News & Education
11. Sports
12. Style & Fashion
13. Technology & Computing
14. Television
15. Travel

Only 4 categories of subreddits are shared between these two lists:

1. Automotive
2. Food & Drink
3. Gaming
4. Sports

The rest on the list in the survey either appear to be smaller parts of one of the advertising target categories or are completely new / unavailable for targeting (i.e. NSFW).

An interesting note here is that many of the top advertising taget categories or types of subreddits appear to have been left out in the list for the survey including Animals, Travel, Music, Entertainment, Family, etc…

Here’s the full list of subreddits categorized in the survey along with their corresponding category. Use this list to help you with your Reddit advertising campaigns or Reddit marketing by better understaind how Reddit might be targeting your ads to certain subreddits.

SUBREDDIT	CATEGORY
/r/soccer	Sports
/r/NBA	Sports
/r/NFL	Sports
/r/loseit	Health and Fitness
/r/running	Health and Fitness
/r/getmotivated	Health and Fitness
/r/gonewild	NSFW
/r/porn	NSFW
/r/sex	NSFW
/r/pcmasterrace	Electronics and Technology
/r/buildapc	Electronics and Technology
/r/programmerhumor	Electronics and Technology
/r/trees	Lifestyle/Identity
/r/athiesm	Lifestyle/Identity
/r/gaybros	Lifestyle/Identity
/r/iama	Q&A/Discussion
/r/askhistorians	Q&A/Discussion
/r/askscience	Q&A/Discussion
/r/wallstreetbets	Personal Finance
/r/povertyfinance	Personal Finance
/r/cryptocurrency	Personal Finance
/r/shingekinokyoin	Fandoms
/r/harrypotter	Fandoms
/r/marvelstudios	Fandoms
/r/forbiddensnacks	Food and Drink
/r/kitchenconfidential	Food and Drink
/r/mealprepsunday	Food and Drink
/r/beautyguruchatter	Beauty/Fashion
/r/redditlaqueristas	Beauty/Fashion
/r/panporn	Beauty/Fashion
/r/worldnews	News, Issues, Politics
/r/politics	News, Issues, Politics
/r/truereddit	News, Issues, Politics
/r/apexlegends	Gaming
/r/leagueoflegends	Gaming
/r/destinythegame	Gaming
/r/pics	Img, GIF, and Video sharing
/r/youtubehaiku	Img, GIF, and Video sharing
/r/gifs	Img, GIF, and Video sharing
/r/formuladank	Automotive
/r/teslamotors	Automotive
/r/vandwellers	Automotive

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