What are promoted posts and how are they labeled to users?

Promoted posts are Reddit's primary advertising product, and they are designed to appear natively within the regular post feed in order to reach users in a contextually relevant browsing environment. A promoted post looks structurally identical to an organic post: it has a title, body content (which can be text, an image, a video, or a link), a subreddit origin or advertiser name, and it appears in the same card format as regular content. The key difference is the labeling. Every promoted post on Reddit is clearly marked with the word "Promoted" displayed as a small tag beneath the title, before the upvote count. On mobile, the label is similarly placed in a consistent location that experienced Reddit users learn to recognize quickly. Unlike organic posts, promoted posts do not accumulate real upvotes from the community — the vote count shown may be suppressed, fixed, or not displayed at all depending on the advertiser's settings. Advertisers also have the option to disable comments on promoted posts, which is a common choice because Reddit users often respond to ads with skeptical, critical, or satirical comments that the brand prefers to avoid. When comments are disabled, the promoted post effectively becomes a one-way broadcast rather than a discussion thread. Promoted posts are placed in the feeds of users who match the advertiser's targeting criteria, which can include subreddit membership, expressed interests, geographic location, and device type. Reddit also runs promoted posts within specific subreddits when advertisers choose community-specific placements. The platform explicitly prohibits promoted posts from misrepresenting themselves as organic community content, and the "Promoted" label is a non-negotiable part of the display format. Users who subscribe to Reddit Premium and have ad-free browsing enabled do not see promoted posts in their feeds.