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Reddit, long known as the internet’s quirky corner for memes and niche forums, has quietly emerged as one of the most valuable digital advertising platforms in the world. The platform’s ad revenue is set to touch a record $1.8 billion in 2025, marking a year-on-year growth of nearly 50 per cent, according to WARC.
Forecasts suggest the figure could soar to $2.5 billion by 2026, placing Reddit firmly in the league of global advertising heavyweights.
The transformation is powered by a mix of AI-driven ad products, smarter targeting tools, and a surge in interest from brands seeking authentic engagement with hyper-niche audiences. According to Reddit’s Q1 2025 earnings report, the platform’s daily active users rose 31 per cent year-on-year to 108 million, spread across more than 100,000 active communities.
While these numbers reflect Reddit’s global surge, the platform’s presence in India is only beginning to find its footing.
“Reddit’s Indian ad ecosystem is no longer a question of if, but how quietly. While less than 10 per cent of large consumer brands have activated formal campaigns, we’re seeing a 40 per cent year-on-year rise in content engagement across Indian subreddits,” said Amyn Ghadiali, Country Head, Gozoop Creative.
He further likened Reddit to a lab rather than a line item in a media plan, noting that most APAC brands allocate just 5–7 per cent of digital budgets to the platform. The payoff, he said, is “signal density, not just CPM efficiency,” with community-led dialogue and co-creation delivering 30–50 per cent longer engagement durations than passive scroll platforms.
Reddit’s AI ad tools, Ghadiali said, are cutting creative iteration cycles by up to 40 per cent, enabling brands to move at “community speed.”
Indian marketers in technology, real estate, and entertainment are beginning to explore Reddit for performance marketing as well as brand storytelling. CoinDCX, a cryptocurrency trading platform in India, told exchange4media that Reddit accounts for approximately 3–5 per cent of their digital ad spend.
The Virality Economy
Prashant Verma, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at CoinDCX, said, “This allocation is strategically directed towards crypto-savvy audiences where Reddit's contextual targeting has demonstrated strong performance. We anticipate increasing this allocation as we optimize campaigns and achieve higher ROIs compared to other emerging platforms.”
Global brands
WARC data shows that Reddit offers advertisers a credibility advantage, with 76 per cent of users viewing its content as more honest than on other platforms and one in four posts centred on product recommendations. Brands that integrate seamlessly into community discussions through AMAs, targeted engagement or relevant product suggestions can see a measurable lift in sentiment.
While performance-driven mid- and lower-funnel ads still account for 60 per cent of revenue, top-of-funnel brand campaigns are growing at their fastest pace in over three years, reflecting Reddit’s rising appeal as a platform that delivers both awareness and conversion.
Celeste Huang, Media Insights Analyst, WARC Media, and author of the report, said, “Reddit’s ad business is currently relatively small, but its impressive ad spend growth, its increasing reach, which now surpasses X, and its investment in AI is catching the attention of a wider pool of advertisers.”
Recent campaigns featured on Reddit’s official Business case studies showcase how global brands are tapping the platform’s unique ad formats for measurable impact.
Other Platforms
Lenovo’s U.S. performance campaigns used a multi-placement strategy, including Conversation Ads, to achieve 40 per cent lower CPA for qualified site visits compared to averages, with the format now accounting for 66 per cent of its North American performance spend and driving a 30 per cent year-on-year CPA improvement.
Samsung, meanwhile, leveraged Reddit’s creative optimisation tools to surpass engagement benchmarks, demonstrating how tech brands can pair targeted placements with community-relevant content to boost both performance and brand lift. And Jack Daniel’s holiday campaign on Reddit delivered over $5 million in incremental sales, achieving a 150 per cent higher sales lift and 5× ROAS compared to NCS digital norms, with 86 per cent of sales coming from new or lapsed buyers.
Mitchelle Rozario Jansen, Senior Vice President – Business Strategy & Growth at White Rivers Media, said the platform’s rise has been fuelled not by aggressive ad saturation or algorithmic manipulation, but by tools that enhance rather than disrupt conversations. “Their AI-powered Community Intelligence suite generates roughly 20 per cent higher click-through rates, proving that brands can tap into authentic discussions without compromising community integrity,” she added.
Jansen further explained that Reddit’s focus on mid- and lower-funnel solutions, which is about 60 per cent of its revenue, alongside retail media partnerships reflects a sharp grasp of advertiser needs while preserving user experience. Its machine translation–driven global expansion has fueled roughly 80 per cent overseas revenue growth, signalling genuine accessibility over surface-level reach.
Can Indian brands keep up?
Reddit’s India playbook received a major boost in June 2025 when cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar became its global brand ambassador. Tendulkar’s interactions on subreddits like r/IndiaCricket have created organic touchpoints for both sports brands and advertisers keen to reach cricket-loving audiences.
According to Ghadiali, Reddit’s recent ambassadorship with Sachin Tendulkar wasn’t a celebrity play, it was a bridge to build trust. He added that AMAs and native threads are slowly moving from fringe tactics to thoughtful experiments, especially in youth, crypto, gaming, and cricket communities.
He said, “Reddit isn’t about market segments, it’s about meaning clusters. And brands in tech, gaming, D2C, and finance are tapping into that with disproportionate success. These categories account for over 60 per cent of Reddit’s top-performing branded content globally, and that pattern holds true in APAC too.”
Ghadiali attributed this to verticals aligning with high-intent behaviours such as problem-solving, peer review, and identity signalling. For instance, a gaming brand hosting a behind-the-scenes AMA can drive 3× more comment engagement than display ads, while a D2C skincare label sharing user journeys in r/SkincareAddiction often earns 2–3× more upvotes than typical influencer content.
Verma of CoinDCX added that while platforms like Meta, Instagram, and Google Ads offer broader reach, Reddit delivers highly targeted access to crypto-focused communities, producing better-qualified traffic. “The engagement quality on Reddit is superior, as users actively seek and discuss crypto content, leading to better-qualified traffic,” he said, noting improved engagement rates for niche campaigns.
For CoinDCX, Reddit primarily functions as a performance channel, driving engaged, crypto-aware traffic. The brand measures success through direct-response metrics such as CTR, conversion rates (sign-ups, deposits), CPA, and AVPU, while comments and upvotes provide qualitative insights. Daily optimisations, Verma emphasised, are anchored in performance data to ensure efficient user acquisition.
Jansen further noted that the real genius lies in their light advertisement load strategy while making every impression significantly more effective. According to her, this challenges the industry's volume-obsessed mindset, proving that strategic restraint coupled with authentic engagement creates sustainable growth.
“Reddit's success validates our belief that the future belongs to platforms that respect community culture and enable meaningful brand participation,” she concluded.
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