I used to be strolling over to take the stage at SMMW 2026 in Anaheim, California, final Thursday, listening intently to Steve Huffman, founder and CEO of Reddit, talk about the final quarter at Reddit, however extra importantly, to get a way of what the focus could be for the remainder of the 12 months.
Query after query, I noticed a narrative unfolding that hadn’t been there in the previous few earnings calls, one which had much less to do with advert income and AI offers than with the underlying adjustments Reddit is making to the platform itself.
These adjustments matter should you’re making an attempt to build organic presence on Reddit, join with a neighborhood, or get cited in AI solutions.
OGS Media works carefully with Reddit, testing new options, contributing to r/redditforbusiness, and different facets we’re working on behind closed doorways. However I’ve additionally been on Reddit for 20 years and have been watching these earnings calls since the IPO. This one was completely different and stood out to me.
The headlines you’ll see are all about advert income up 74%, DAU at 126.8 million, and the AI partnership pricing query Wealthy Greenfield requested Steve. All actual, all attention-grabbing.
However Steve and Jen Wong spent extra of this name than any I can bear in mind speaking about issues Reddit doesn’t at all times publicly emphasize. They talked about the value of real human connection, about ensuring each view on the platform is beneficial sufficient that an advert subsequent to it carries weight, and about the way it’s nonetheless too laborious for regular individuals to take part on Reddit in the first place.
None of that is new internally. Should you’ve labored carefully with Reddit’s groups for any size of time, you’ve heard most of it. The brand new factor is that they’re saying it on an earnings name, in entrance of traders, with their identify on it. That’s a distinct sign completely.
The Progress Math Isn’t Speculative
When Steve mentioned the purpose is 100 million day by day U.S. customers, the headline writes itself. The mathematics beneath it is what manufacturers ought to truly concentrate to.
Reddit is sitting at 50 million day by day and 200 million weekly customers in the U.S. proper now. So the 100 million goal isn’t a go-find-new-users drawback, it’s a convert-weekly-into-daily drawback. The viewers is already there.
For perspective, Reddit was at 12 million day by day customers 10 years in the past. Going from 50 to 100 million is a smaller stretch than what they’ve already pulled off, and so they did most of that development before AI search was a significant tailwind. The headline quantity sounds aspirational, however the math says it’s the subsequent apparent step.
Steve additionally dropped a stat that caught my consideration and was validating. Once you have a look at how usually Reddit customers come again, the two largest teams are individuals who use Reddit at some point per week and individuals who use all of it seven, with every part in the center being smaller. His phrasing was that after they have you ever, they have you ever, which I feel is precisely proper.
For manufacturers making an attempt to resolve whether or not Reddit is price investing in, this is the math that issues. The viewers isn’t an informal scroll, it’s a high-engagement neighborhood of individuals spending severe time. That’s a distinct worth proposition than reach-based platforms, and it’s why Reddit content keeps outperforming what most manufacturers can do on their very own websites.
The Limitations Are Coming Down
An important improvement from this earnings call for natural entrepreneurs is that Reddit is lastly addressing the karma wall drawback in public. It’s one thing we’ve been giving Reddit suggestions on for over a 12 months by means of our partnership.
Karma partitions and age gates have made it almost unattainable for brand spanking new accounts to participate in the subreddits that actually matter. Should you tried to construct an actual Reddit presence in 2025, you hit this day by day, with new worker accounts who couldn’t publish and mods who, fully understandably, didn’t belief any new account as a result of the spam drawback was that unhealthy.
Steve mentioned it straight on the name. Reddit is “working our approach out of age and Karma limits with higher AI-powered spam safety to assist shield communities from unhealthy new customers like spammers, however be welcoming to good new customers.”
This issues greater than it sounds. Reddit has been working on this internally for over a 12 months, and lots of the patterns OGS sees in consumer work feed again into these conversations. Steve saying it publicly on an earnings name is a distinct sign completely. It means the work is shut sufficient to ship that they’re prepared to put their identify on it in entrance of traders.
That’s not Reddit testing whether or not to do one thing. That’s Reddit telling you it’s coming.
Making It Simpler To Begin A Neighborhood
This is a associated however separate barrier from the karma partitions, and it truly issues extra for manufacturers making an attempt to construct one thing severe on Reddit.
Steve talked about Reddit needing to focus on what they’re calling neighborhood success, principally how straightforward it is to create and develop a neighborhood on the platform. He was clear this isn’t solely a world problem, it consists of the U.S.
This is one thing we run into on each model engagement. If a model needs to launch its personal subreddit, the pure sample is to create the model account, create the subreddit, and begin posting content material to fill it. That content material is going to be about the model’s product or class, as a result of that’s the entire level of the neighborhood.
The issue is that the sample appears to be like nearly similar to what spammers and manipulators do once they’re making an attempt to sport Reddit for search or LLM citations. They create the account, create the subreddit, publish the content material, all from the similar supply, all about one matter. Reddit’s defenses are designed to catch precisely that, and for good cause.
However when Model X does the similar factor legitimately, they will get caught in the similar internet, although they’re not breaking any guidelines, and this is genuinely how an actual neighborhood will get began. There isn’t one other approach to launch a model neighborhood on Reddit. You might have to begin with the model account and the model content material.
Steve publicly acknowledging that neighborhood success is an issue Reddit wants to resolve is an actual sign for manufacturers. They know the respectable path appears to be like like the unhealthy path proper now, and so they’re working on a approach to inform them aside. That adjustments the math for any model that’s been holding off on launching its personal neighborhood as a result of they have been fearful about getting flagged.
The Human Voice Argument Is Now Official
There is no synthetic intelligence with out precise intelligence, and that intelligence has to come from actual individuals having actual conversations someplace. Steve mentioned nearly precisely that on the name.
He went additional when Justin Publish requested about AI engines utilizing Reddit knowledge:
“You may get a floor stage reply from AI, however you want the context. For a lot of questions, there isn’t a solution. There are a number of views describing that reply and a number of the explanation why completely different elements of that reply may be related to you or not.”
That’s the validation part, nearly phrase for phrase, how I’ve been describing it to shoppers and on stage for almost two years. The place in the consumer journey the place individuals go to really feel okay a few resolution they’re about to make, the place they need context and nuance and different individuals’s experiences, not a abstract. There aren’t many moments the place you get to hear a public firm CEO articulate the framework you’ve been constructing your work round. Watching it occur on an earnings name was its personal sort of validation.
This is a a lot greater deal than most individuals are giving it credit score for. The previous few years of digital advertising have been everybody chasing what AI can do sooner, cheaper, and at extra scale. Reddit is the platform that bet on what AI can’t do, which is generate genuine human dialog. As extra of the web will get summarized and optimized for consideration by fashions, the worth of actual human dialogue goes up, not down.
What’s new is that Reddit’s CEO is now making that the official company place. Steve and Jen each got here again to the human voice argument a number of occasions throughout the name. They tied it to advert worth, to consumer retention, to the AI offers, and to why manufacturers must be on Reddit in the first place.
For entrepreneurs, the learn is that Reddit isn’t a pattern you’re making an attempt to catch. It’s the platform whose total cause for being is now lining up with how individuals are truly utilizing the web in the AI period.
The AI Offers And Search Are Sturdy
Since so many entrepreneurs are targeted on the connection between Reddit, Google, and LLMs, it’s vital to word the Google and OpenAI deals are nonetheless in place and nonetheless beneficial to either side. Wealthy Greenfield requested, pointedly, whether or not the $50-60 million a 12 months Reddit will get from these offers is sufficient given how vital the knowledge is. Steve didn’t chunk on a renegotiation query, however he didn’t want to. He confirmed the relationships are mutual, lively, and evolving.
The learn for entrepreneurs is that the AI facet of Reddit’s enterprise isn’t a one-off windfall; it’s a structural a part of how AI will get educated and the way AI solutions questions. Should you’re making an attempt to present up in ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, or anyplace else an LLM is answering, Reddit is in the supply chain.
Search on Reddit itself was additionally known as out as an actual precedence. Search WAUqs are up 30% year-over-year, and Reddit is placing precise engineering funding into making it higher. Folks aren’t solely stumbling onto Reddit by means of Google anymore; they’re going to Reddit on purpose to discover issues they will’t get from a Google search or an LLM reply.
The half natural entrepreneurs ought to pay closest consideration to is what’s taking place with Reddit Solutions, Reddit’s AI-powered search experience inside the platform. Steve mentioned Reddit Solutions is turning into extra agentic, and gave particular examples. Now you can ask it to evaluate two issues, like “ought to I watch film A or film B,” and so they’re integrating Reddit’s product search catalog straight into the solutions, so once you ask what’s the finest headphone, you get product hyperlinks proper inside the response.
This is the validation phase, moving inside Reddit itself. Folks used to go to Google, discover a Reddit thread, click on by means of, and browse. Now, Reddit is providing to do the synthesis for them with the similar human conversations beneath. That’s a distinct form of search, and it sits at precisely the second in the purchaser journey the place choices truly get made.
Should you’re an natural marketer, that adjustments how you must take into consideration Reddit content material, the similar approach pillar pages as soon as modified how individuals considered weblog posts.
What I Take From All This
Should you’ve been ready on Reddit as a result of the platform felt too closed off, this is your sign. The partitions are coming down, the development math is actual, and Reddit’s strategic place round AI and human dialog is locking in publicly.
The following part of selling isn’t one other channel; it’s being human in the locations individuals go to discover different people. Reddit simply made that the official technique.
If you’d like to go deeper on what all this truly appears to be like like in observe, I’d level you to two current webinars I did with Search Engine Journal. “Reddit Marketing in 2026: What Changed, What Actually Works Now“ covers the broader strategic shift, and the more moderen “From Reddit to Revenue: Building Real Community That Drives Sales and AI Visibility“ will get into the sensible facet. Each choose up the place this article leaves off.
And should you’ve been struggling to work out how to get on Reddit or make it truly work in your model, that’s actually what we do at OGS Media. Attain out at ogsmedia.com if you’d like to speak by means of it.
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