Tracking Reddit Ads to App Purchases

I spent £200 on Reddit ads last year promoting a utility app. The campaign targeted three subreddits, ran for two weeks, and drove about 400 installs. Twelve people bought the premium version. Not bad for Reddit.

The problem? I had no idea which subreddit did the work. Reddit's ad dashboard told me clicks and impressions per ad group. It did not tell me which clicks turned into paying customers. So when it came time to double down, I was guessing.

This is the gap most app developers hit with Reddit. The platform is surprisingly good at driving installs from people who actually want your app. It's just bad at telling you what happened after they left Reddit.

What Reddit actually tells you

Reddit Ads Manager gives you impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, and (if you set up the Reddit Pixel) some conversion events. For app installs, you can track install events through their mobile measurement partner integrations.

The issue is that "install" is where their tracking effectively stops. If someone installs your app from a Reddit ad and then buys something three days later, Reddit doesn't know about it. You see the install. You don't see the purchase. And the purchase is the part that matters.

For organic Reddit posts (which plenty of indie developers rely on), tracking is even worse. You get upvotes and comments. That's it. No click tracking, no install attribution, no purchase data.

Why this matters more than you'd think

Reddit traffic converts differently from other platforms. Someone who finds your app through a genuine recommendation in r/androidapps or r/iOSProgramming is already past the "is this legit?" stage. They've read comments from other users. They've seen criticism handled. By the time they tap your link, they're warmer than almost any ad-driven user.

This means Reddit often has a higher purchase conversion rate than Instagram or TikTok, but lower volume. If you can't attribute purchases back to specific subreddits or posts, you end up under-investing in the channel that's quietly making you the most money per install.

I've seen this pattern with three different apps now. Reddit gets dismissed because the raw install numbers are low, but the revenue per install is significantly higher than other sources. You only see that if you're tracking purchases, not just installs.

The tracked link approach

The fix is straightforward. Instead of sending all your Reddit traffic through the same App Store link, you create a separate tracked link for each campaign, subreddit, or post.

Here's what this looks like in practice with LinkOwl:

For Reddit ads: Create one tracked link per ad group or subreddit target. Use that link as your ad destination instead of a direct App Store link.

For organic posts: Create a tracked link for each subreddit you post in. When you comment with your app link in r/productivity vs r/iOSProgramming, each gets its own URL.

For Reddit bio/profile: If people find your app through your Reddit profile, that gets its own link too.

Each link redirects to the App Store, but records the click with the source information attached. When that user later makes a purchase, the attribution chain connects back to the specific Reddit source.

Setting it up

1. Create a LinkOwl account and register your app
2. Generate tracked links. Name them clearly: reddit-productivity-organic, reddit-ios-ad-march, etc.
3. Use those links in your Reddit posts and ad campaigns
4. Connect your purchase tracking. If you use RevenueCat, there's a webhook integration that handles this automatically. Otherwise, fire an API call from your app when a purchase completes.

The whole setup takes about ten minutes. After that, every purchase from Reddit shows up in your dashboard with the exact source.

Reading the data

After a couple of weeks, you'll have enough data to make decisions. The things worth looking at:

Click-to-install rate per source. Some subreddits will send curious clickers who never install. Others send people who install immediately. This tells you where your app resonates.

Install-to-purchase rate per source. This is the number that matters most. A subreddit with 50 installs and 8 purchases is worth more than one with 200 installs and 3 purchases.

Time to purchase. Reddit users often install, poke around, and come back days later to buy. Knowing this delay helps you avoid killing campaigns too early.

Organic vs paid on Reddit

Most Reddit marketing advice focuses on paid ads. But for indie developers, organic Reddit often outperforms paid on a per-pound basis.

The trick with organic Reddit is that you can't be promotional. Subreddits will destroy you for dropping a link without context. The posts that work are genuine answers to genuine questions, with your app mentioned as one option among several.

When you track these organic mentions with individual links, you start to see which types of posts convert. In my experience, a detailed answer in a niche subreddit (50 upvotes) outperforms a popular post in a general subreddit (500 upvotes) almost every time. The data backs this up once you can actually see the purchases.

What about the Reddit Pixel?

The Reddit Pixel is their JavaScript tracking snippet for websites. It works well for web conversions, but it's limited for mobile apps. You can fire pixel events from a mobile web landing page, but if someone goes from Reddit to the App Store to your app, the pixel loses them.

Reddit also has mobile measurement partner (MMP) integrations with the big attribution platforms. These work, but they're designed for apps spending thousands per month on ads. If you're an indie developer spending £50-200 on a Reddit campaign, the MMP setup is overkill.

Tracked links fill the gap. They work for both paid and organic Reddit traffic, they don't require a pixel or MMP integration, and they track all the way to purchase.

A real example

Say you're promoting a productivity app. You create three tracked links:

• reddit-productivity-paid for your ad campaign in r/productivity
• reddit-productivity-organic for organic posts in the same subreddit
• reddit-iosapps-organic for posts in r/iOSApps

After a month, your data might look like this:

The paid campaign drove the most clicks but the worst conversion. The organic post in the smaller, more targeted subreddit drove the best revenue. Without per-source purchase tracking, you'd look at this data and conclude the paid campaign was your best Reddit channel.

Getting started

If Reddit is part of your marketing mix (or you've been meaning to try it), proper attribution makes the difference between guessing and knowing. LinkOwl tracks clicks through to purchases at 5p per attributed sale, with no monthly fee.

Create your tracked links, post in a few subreddits, run a small ad test, and let the purchase data tell you where to focus.