The power of Reddit: What the stats show
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At the start of 2025, 63.9% of the population were using social media in one form or another. This isn’t surprising as there are hundreds of social media platforms, with at least 33 having over 100 million monthly active users. With the top five platforms being: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok. One platform that is also on the list for position 16 is Reddit.
Reddit is a social forum of news and content that is published by users and rated by other users. In this blog we’re going to be taking a deeper dive into the platform looking at the data of:
- Who uses the platform
- What type of content is shared
- The impact the platform has on society
- How the platform makes money
- How Reddit can help other businesses make money
We’ll also discover more about how Reddit, which in December 2024 was ranked the ninth most visited site in the world, competes with other social platforms and the social media industry.
With lots to cover, let’s get started.
What is Reddit?
Our CIO James Welch is a big fan of Reddit, here are his thoughts on the platform:
Reddit’s tagline is ‘Dive into anything’, but it used to be ‘the front page of the internet’. Both of these are good ways to describe it, but you could also say that Reddit is a place where thousands of forums have congregated in one place. This is because the rules of some ‘subreddits’ are wildly different to other areas of the site. Things that you can do or say in one forum/subreddit are frowned upon in others.
Reddit is also largely run by volunteer moderators, known as ‘mods’, which again, can vary wildly in their approach to what is or what isn’t acceptable to do. This can catch you off guard, and as someone who has used Reddit for many years, I still fall foul of these varied rules from time to time.
Some subreddits allow you to post links to useful resources, whereas others will ban you for doing just that. At the time of writing, hundreds of subreddits banned their users from posting links to Elon Musk’s ‘X’ platform.
Most users of Reddit are members of several subreddits, and so their home ‘feed’ is populated with the latest or ‘hottest’ posts across their favoured categories. You can see general top, or popular stories across the full range of Reddit topics, but in my experience, most users like to only view content from subreddits that they have decided to join.
And only viewing content from subreddits they have joined is where the term ‘echo chamber’ has come into full force. Many millions of people are hearing only one side of the story across many subjects, further polarising thoughts between populations worldwide, but also in countries, too.
The History of Reddit
Reddit was founded in America by three university students in 2005. A year later the site was acquired by global mass media company, Condé Nast Publications. The new owners then moved the company to San Francisco, which is where the company is still based today. What then followed was a series of funding rounds that included Snoop Dogg and Jared Leto, which resulted in the company being valued at $3 billion 14 years after launching.
After years of growth and success, the site launched on the stock market in 2024 using the code RDDT, and the current market cap stands at $38 billion.
Who uses Reddit?
Over the years, Reddit has become one of the main websites internet users go to to discover news and share information. With over 365.4 million weekly active users are discussing a variety of topics. Here is more information about the demographics of Reddit users:
- Out of the 97.2 million daily users, 44.1 million are registered users (source).
- 2 in 3 Reddit users are male (source).
- 44% of users based in the USA are aged 18-29 (source).
- Reddit is used worldwide; however, as an American company, it’s not surprising that its biggest audience is based in the USA, with 49.59% of its users based in America (source).
- The majority of Reddit users access the site via mobile devices (source).
- The average user spends 20 minutes each day on the platform, with more regular users spending up to 45 minutes (source).
- 90% of users trust Reddit to learn about new products and brands (source).
The platform functions more like a forum. Users are essentially in charge of the content they share, and volunteer moderators patrol the site for inappropriate content. As of September 2024, over 16 billion posts and engagements were shared on the platform (source).
With this content model, it means the platform houses an eclectic mix of content. Some of the largest communities on Reddit include:
- Tech – 72% of tech decision-makers use the platform for peer reviews
- Health – over 9 million patients, 6.2 million healthcare providers and 9.1 million caregivers use the site
- DTC – 87% of users say good content is that which is of use, not popular
- Gaming – over half of users are gamers of some sort
- Parenting – 140 million monthly views
Engagement on Reddit takes four forms: comments, upvotes, downvotes, and awards for content you really enjoy. A variety of factors can impact engagement, including the time of the post, the topic, its relevance to the community, and, generally, the content itself. Engagement rates can vary, but on average, good engagement is classed as 1-10% of the audience size.
The impact of Reddit
Since launching in 2005, Reddit has become one of the biggest websites on the internet. With it’s popularity comes a lot of impact within society and business. It has also become a place for users to discover and discuss news stories. According to Statista, 43% of US Reddit users use the platform for news. Which is why it’s so important for moderators to be monitoring the platform to ensure information that is being shared is factually accurate. Luckily a study of Reddit conversations between 2016 and 2018 found that those posts which were rated as ‘false’ were fact-checked and dealt with quicker than those rated as true.
Like with many social media platforms, Reddit plays a big part in influencing internet culture. With users being able to contribute content and information about such a variety of topics it enables niche communities or subreddits, to grow and a creation of online cultures within those communities. It is said there are over 130,000 active subreddits and that doesn’t include those which are private or shut down.
Whilst information can spread quickly on the popular platform, concerns with Reddit’s influence include the spread of misinformation, creation of echo chambers and toxic communities which are prone to negativity and extreme viewpoints. These can be kept under control by moderators and users disliking and reporting content.
Monetisation of Reddit
So we understand how popular the platform is and the powerful influence it has, however how does Reddit harness this to make money and how can other businesses do the same?
In 2024, Reddit announced that in Q3 of that year it’s revenue had grown 68% taking the figure to $348.4 million. The primary source of revenue for the platform is through allowing businesses to advertise on the platform. It also generates income from a premium membership service called Reddit Premium where users can use the platform ad-free and access some additional features not available to regular users.
Advertising on Reddit
Businesses that choose to advertise on Reddit can reach passionate and engage customers in order to drive brand awareness, traffic, conversions or app installs.
The platform itself stats that 27% of users who view a Reddit ad are more likely to purchase a product, and 79% of users are interested in seeing brands share product information on the platform (source).
There are a variety of ad formats available, including but not limited to: promoted posts, image ads, video ads, and carousel ads. They even have ‘high impact offerings’ which allow advertisers to ‘takeover Reddit’ in a 24 hour brand immersion, a ‘category takeover’ choosing from 15 different verticals and ‘First view’ which enables ads to be shown at the top of the page.
Advertising success story
Hundreds of businesses use Reddit for advertising. One example is Danish juice and coffee brand, Joe & The Juice. With over 338 global locations, they wanted to use Reddit to drive app downloads. By using zip code targeting they were able to reach users close to their locations and drove a 49% higher CTR than benchmark and a 161% ROAS in EMEA.
As we mentioned there are hundreds of social media platforms available, with new ones being introduced to the market on a regular basis. Some of the top platforms include Meta (Facebook and Instagram), YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat. Like with Reddit, all of these platforms offer functionality for businesses to advertise on.
With Facebook having the most amount of users, it is considered to be the best for advertising, and since it’s part of Meta which includes Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, advertising with Meta can put businesses in front of 3.35 billion users every day.
However a large audience might not be what you’re looking for. Instead you might be wanting to target a specific group of online users or audience demographics. In which case, you should then choose a platform that has this the highest number of users that meet your audience requirements. For example, if you want to reach certain age brackets then these are the recommended platforms based on their users ages:
- 18-29 – Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram.
- 30-39 – LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Snapchat and Instagram
- 40-49 – LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (Twitter)
- 50-59 – Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest
Overall, there are lots of platforms for you to choose from and when deciding which to include in your social media strategy you should conduct research and testing to get the right one for you and your business needs.
Conclusion
So hopefully now you understand how this online forum has spent the last 20 years growing to be in the top 10 of websites visited on the internet, and the power it can provide for you and your business.
Remember, just because some businesses have success with advertising on Reddit, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right paid social platform for you. We recommend carrying out your own research into the platform, using their online resources and information. It’s also important to understand what you’re hoping to achieve with your paid social advertising when choosing a platform.
If you need some support with this our team of paid social experts would be happy to help. We can conduct a paid social audit and assess your goals and competitors to create a bespoke strategy that will generate the ROI you’re looking for. Contact our team today to find out more.
Deeper insights
Learn more about digital marketing tools and platforms, and whether your business should be using them by reading our other blogs:
