Reddit has quietly become one of the most powerful advertising platforms on the internet.
Now, with a breakout financial result and a CMO on a mission to make the platform “known, relevant and used by everyone around the world,” the conversation business is officially open for big media money.
The platform’s 1.5 billion-plus monthly visitors populate forums spanning everything from global geopolitics to the deeply niche, such as r/RealBeesFakeTopHats – a forum dedicated to photoshopping top hats onto bees, r/mildlyinteresting, and r/AskAustralia – ensuring that no matter how specific someone’s interests are, there’s a community waiting.
It is, as the company’s chief marketing officer Jim Squires explained to Mediaweek, the biggest small place on the planet.
“Everyone has something that they’re interested in, some interest or something in their life that they can get value from Reddit,” Squires said.
“I want to make Reddit known, relevant and used by everyone around the world, and we have so much opportunity to do that.”
That ability to offer both mass reach and surgical niche targeting sits at the heart of Reddit’s advertising surge.
Reddit’s chief marketing officer Jim Squires. Source: Reddit
A financial turning point
Reddit posted Q4 revenue of approximately A$1.1 billion, up 70% year-on-year, with advertising driving almost all of it.
Ad revenue climbed 75% to around A$1.03 billion, while full-year revenue rose 69% to approximately A$3.3 billion.
Net income for the quarter hit roughly A$380 million, up from A$107 million a year earlier, and the platform swung to full-year profitability after posting a loss in 2024.
Daily Active Uniques grew 19% to 121.4 million, with international audiences leading the charge. International DAUq jumped 28% year-on-year, compared with 9% growth in the US, and revenue followed: international ad dollars climbed 78% in Q4 alone.
Global ARPU rose 42% to around A$9.00; US ARPU surged 53% to approximately A$16.20 – a clear signal that Reddit is getting markedly better at turning intent-rich conversations into advertising returns.
Adjusted EBITDA came in at approximately A$490 million for the quarter, a 45% margin that places Reddit squarely alongside the top tier of global ad-supported platforms.
The board’s approval of a A$1.5 billion share buyback, bold timing for a recently listed company, underlines confidence in the platform’s trajectory.
Why advertisers are paying attention
For Squires, the commercial logic is straightforward: Reddit users aren’t scrolling passively. They’re actively researching purchases – and that changes everything about how advertising performs on the platform.
“People are often on Reddit to have conversations with other people about the types of things that they want to purchase and what they want to buy,” he said.
“Unlike other platforms where you may be there to do something else and then you happen to see an ad… here it’s actually part of that purchase journey.”
The implication for media planners is significant. When someone lands on Reddit -whether via search or direct – they are, in Squires’ words, “comparing notes and actually making purchase decisions on the platform.”
Advertising that slots naturally into those conversations isn’t an interruption. It’s a contribution.
“The advertising, when done right, and people expect to see that advertising on the platform, can be part of that conversation and targeted towards those conversations so that it’s bringing value to people and what they want to do on the platform,” he said.
Lowering the barrier to entry
That intent signal is increasingly being packaged into accessible ad products designed to get brands on the platform faster and with less friction.
Reddit’s Max campaigns are built around simplicity – advertisers bring existing creative, set their objectives, and let the system identify the most relevant conversations and communities.
“We want to make it really easy for advertisers to get started so they can take creatives that they might be running on other platforms that they’ve already done, and they can bring that over very easily,” Squires said.
The ambition goes further than ease of setup. Reddit wants to give advertisers meaningful insights into which communities are most relevant to their category and what people are actually saying about their brand – and their competitors.
“We want to give advertisers insights about what communities are relevant for what they’re doing, what people are saying about the brand and their competitors, and then make it really easy for them to set up and run,” Squires said.
“We’re trying to make it really easy for advertisers to get those insights, set up their campaigns, create value for people with their advertising – and then that drives impact for them.”
The AI tailwind
There’s a longer-term structural argument playing out, too.
As AI-generated content floods the internet, human-verified experience becomes scarcer – and more valuable. For Squires, that dynamic is one of Reddit’s most compelling advantages.
“In a world that’s going more and more AI, Reddit really becomes scarcer and more important because it’s the most human place on the internet,” he said.
“AI can’t test drive a car and then tell you what the experience was -a human has to do that and then share their experience.”
It’s a distinction that goes to the core of what Reddit is.
AI can learn from human conversations, Squires acknowledged, but it cannot replicate them – and for questions where there is no single right answer, the conversation itself is the point.
“What should I listen to, what should I do – the answer is actually the conversation that you have and hearing different people’s points of view,” he said.
“That’s really what just makes Reddit more and more scarce and more and more important.”