Reddit Pixel explained: conversion tracking for Reddit ads

If Tag Explorer has put an Advertising card on your scan with a title like t2_a1b2c3d4, that is the Reddit Pixel. It is the tag Reddit uses to find out what happens on your site after someone clicks a Reddit ad, and the odd looking t2_ prefix is the most informative thing about it. Paste your page into Tag Explorer to see this tag on your own site.

Without the pixel, Reddit Ads can tell you how many people saw and clicked an ad and nothing beyond that. With it, Reddit can attribute enquiries and sales back to individual campaigns, optimise bidding towards people who behave like converters, and build audiences you can advertise to again.

What it actually does

The pixel loads a script from Reddit and exposes a function called rdt(). Your site calls it once to initialise with your pixel ID, which also fires the first page visit, and then again for each action worth recording.

That gives you three things.

• Conversion reporting. A lead or a sale is tied back to the campaign, ad group and ad that produced it.
• Optimisation. Reddit’s bidding can be told to chase a conversion event rather than a click, which it can only do once that event is arriving reliably.
• Audiences. Visitors can be grouped for retargeting, for example everyone who read a pricing page in the last month.

Reddit traffic is often earlier in the buying process than search traffic, so the gap between a click and a conversion can be long. That makes the pixel more important here than on channels where people convert in the same session, because a click alone tells you almost nothing about whether the campaign worked.

What the ID means

The Reddit Pixel ID takes the form t2_ followed by a short alphanumeric string, for example t2_a1b2c3d4. Reddit tags every object in its system with a type prefix, and t2_ is the one that marks an account. So your pixel ID is really your advertiser account ID wearing a different hat.

That single fact explains most of the confusion people have with it:

• There is one ID per ad account, not one per website. Two sites advertised from the same account carry the same ID, and their events land in the same pile.
• Changing agency usually means changing ad account, which means a genuinely different t2_ value, not an edited one.
• A t2_ string you find elsewhere in Reddit’s interface is not automatically your pixel ID. Take it from Events Manager in Reddit Ads and nowhere else.

If you run two sites that matter separately, plan for it. Either separate ad accounts, or events named so you can tell which site they came from, otherwise your reporting will blend two businesses into one line.

The events Reddit expects

Reddit’s standard event names are mixed case with no underscores: PageVisit, ViewContent, Search, AddToCart, Lead, SignUp and Purchase, with a Custom type for anything that does not fit the list. That is a different convention again from the platforms likely sitting beside it on your scan, so copying an event name across from another pixel’s setup will not work.

PageVisit is sent by the base snippet automatically. Everything else has to be added deliberately at the point on your site where the thing actually happens, which for a service business usually means a Lead event on a successful form submission. Reddit documents the full list and the parameters each one accepts in its manual conversion events guide.

Matching and the Conversions API

Reddit supports passing hashed identifiers, such as an email address or your own customer ID, alongside an event so the conversion can be matched to a Reddit user when browser signals fall short. Hashing happens before the value leaves the browser, and your privacy policy should cover it.

The server side companion is the Reddit Conversions API, which needs the same pixel ID plus a conversion access token generated in Events Manager. Your server sends the event straight to Reddit, so it survives browser blocking and ad blockers in a way the pixel does not.

The rule that matters if you run both: send the same conversion ID on the browser event and the server event. Reddit uses that value to recognise the two copies as one conversion. Omit it and every sale is counted twice, your reported cost per acquisition halves on paper, and the bidding optimises against numbers that were never real.

What this looks like in Tag Explorer

Tag Explorer draws your page as a tree. Each Google Tag Manager container is a branch, the tags inside it hang beneath it as leaves, and anything hard coded into the page HTML sits under DIRECT ON PAGE.

Reddit appears as an Advertising card with the t2_ ID as the card title and the tag type as the subtitle. Reddit is frequently installed as a Custom HTML tag rather than a template, so do not be surprised to find it under a Custom card with less detail.

On the card, read:

• Where it sits. Under a container is tidy. Under DIRECT ON PAGE as well as a container is a double install.
• The info icon, which opens a short definition and the Learn more link that brought you here.
• A duplicate banner and red attention badge, shown when the same ID is found from two sources.
• The insights panel below the tree, which raises softer advisories, including two different IDs from the same vendor on one page.

Two hard limits. The published container file holds the tag type and the tracking ID but never the human names you gave your tags, so a scan cannot tell you which trigger a tag uses. And the tool reads the published container, so a Reddit tag still sitting in an unsubmitted workspace will not show up.

A scan proves the pixel is installed, not that it fired. Reddit’s Pixel Helper, Tag Manager Preview mode and the DevTools Network tab prove firing.

What to do if it is missing, duplicated or dead

Missing. If Reddit campaigns are live and no Reddit card appears, nothing is being attributed and the optimisation has nothing to learn from. Check the tag exists in your container, that the trigger covers all pages rather than the homepage, and that the container was published. Then scan an inner page, because a pixel installed only on the landing page misses every conversion that happens a click deeper.

Duplicated. The same t2_ ID from two sources sends every event twice. Keep the copy in Tag Manager and remove the one hard coded into the page template. Two different t2_ IDs on one page means two ad accounts are being fed, which is nearly always an old agency’s account still collecting data. Work out which one you can log into, keep that, remove the other.

Dead or stale. The pixel itself is current, so age is not the problem. A finished campaign is. A pixel left in place after Reddit spending stopped still loads on every page, still builds audiences into an account nobody visits, and gives you nothing in return. Take it out when the campaign ends, and note the pixel ID somewhere first, so putting it back later is a five minute job.

Related guides

• Snapchat Pixel explained
• Meta Pixel explained
• LinkedIn Insight Tag explained
• Form submission event listeners explained
• GTM containers explained

Scan your site with Tag Explorer and compare the t2_ value on the card against the one in the Reddit ad account you actually log into. If they are different, your conversion data is being delivered to somebody else. Our ChatGPT ads work starts by settling exactly that kind of question, because a campaign built on measurement you cannot verify is a campaign you cannot judge.