In the weeks leading up to its IPO, Reddit launched two new initiatives designed to enhance opportunities for businesses and advertisers. First, Reddit introduced a data analytics suite known as Reddit Pro, which helps businesses identify relevant trending topics to engage with. A week later, it launched Free-Form Ads. This new ad format not only allows businesses to create ads that blend seamlessly with other posts but also enables interaction with users by allowing comments on the ads. Shortly after its IPO, Reddit also introduced Dynamic Product Ads, which uses machine learning to display relevant products to users based on past shopping behaviors and demonstrated Reddit interests. Data from occam shows that users engage across a broad spectrum of content, ranging from entertainment and sports to science. This wide variety of subreddits provides advertisers unique opportunities for highly targeted advertising. Selling access to its data has also emerged as a new and lucrative revenue stream for Reddit – those training large language models (LLMs) value Reddit data not only for its vast and diverse content, but because it can improve the models’ ability to mimic varied linguistic styles and complex human interactions. Join us as we examine occam data to explore the foundations of Reddit’s business.
Trends in Social Media Usage
- Compared with giants like Facebook and YouTube, Reddit still has a very small user share.
- Despite its modest user base, Reddit is on a rapid growth trajectory, even relative to other comparably sized platforms.
- Reddit spans an extremely broad spectrum of topics, but entertainment, sports, and leisure feature prominently.
- The organization of topics into subreddits provides brands with opportunities for targeted advertising and the possibility of reaching niche audiences with very specific interests.
- Almost half of Redditors subscribe to 5 or more subreddits.
User Demographics
- Reddit users skew younger and male.
- Although Reddit has good penetration among younger cohorts, it also skews towards an upper income demographic.
Ratios show a group’s Reddit usage relative to the general population: ‘1.2x’ = 20% more likely; ‘0.8x’ = 20% less likely.
- r/worldnews is one of the top five subreddits on the platform. High interest in news and academic topics could be the reason Reddit over-indexes to those with college degrees.
- Among the dozen social media platforms tracked by occam, Reddit has one of the lowest proportions of Republican users.
Ratios show a group’s Reddit usage relative to the general population: ‘1.2x’ = 20% more likely; ‘0.8x’ = 20% less likely.
- Reddit usage is higher among white-collar workers than blue-collar workers.
Source: Analysis based on occam™ proprietary AI-enhanced research platform with various data sources, including a wide range of questions asked to over 1000 respondents per day with over three years of history. Information is census-balanced and uses occam’s™ proprietary AI algorithm that ensures minimal sampling bias (<1%). Contact us for more info.
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