I was walking over to take the stage at SMMW 2026 in Anaheim, California, last Thursday, listening intently to Steve Huffman, founder and CEO of Reddit, talk about the last quarter at Reddit, but more importantly, to get a sense of what the focus would be for the rest of the year.<\/p>
Question after question, I saw a story unfolding that hadn\u2019t been there in the last few earnings calls, one that had less to do with ad revenue and AI deals than with the underlying changes Reddit is making to the platform itself.<\/p>
Those changes matter if you\u2019re trying to build organic presence on Reddit, connect with a community, or get cited in AI answers.<\/p>
OGS Media works closely with Reddit, testing new features, contributing to r\/redditforbusiness, and other aspects we\u2019re working on behind closed doors. But I\u2019ve also been on Reddit for 20 years and have been watching these earnings calls since the IPO. This one was different and stood out to me.<\/p>
The headlines you\u2019ll see are all about ad revenue up 74%, DAU at 126.8 million, and the AI partnership pricing question Rich Greenfield asked Steve. All real, all interesting.<\/p>
But Steve and Jen Wong spent more of this call than any I can remember talking about things Reddit doesn\u2019t always publicly emphasize. They talked about the value of real human connection, about making sure every view on the platform is valuable enough that an ad next to it carries weight, and about how it\u2019s still too hard for normal people to participate on Reddit in the first place.<\/p>
None of that is new internally. If you\u2019ve worked closely with Reddit\u2019s teams for any length of time, you\u2019ve heard most of it. The new thing is that they\u2019re saying it on an earnings call, in front of investors, with their name on it. That\u2019s a different signal entirely.<\/p>
The Growth Math Isn\u2019t Speculative<\/h2>
When Steve said the goal is 100 million daily U.S. users, the headline writes itself. The math underneath it is what brands should actually pay attention to.<\/p> Reddit is sitting at 50 million daily and 200 million weekly users in the U.S. right now. So the 100 million target isn\u2019t a go-find-new-users problem, it\u2019s a convert-weekly-into-daily problem. The audience is already there.<\/p> For perspective, Reddit was at 12 million daily users 10 years ago. Going from 50 to 100 million is a smaller stretch than what they\u2019ve already pulled off, and they did most of that growth before AI search was a meaningful tailwind. The headline number sounds aspirational, but the math says it\u2019s the next obvious step.<\/p> Steve also dropped a stat that caught my attention and was validating. When you look at how often Reddit users come back, the two biggest groups are people who use Reddit one day a week and people who use it all seven, with everything in the middle being smaller. His phrasing was that once they have you, they have you, which I think is exactly right.<\/p> For brands trying to decide whether Reddit is worth investing in, this is the math that matters. The audience isn\u2019t a casual scroll, it\u2019s a high-engagement community of people spending serious time. That\u2019s a different value proposition than reach-based platforms, and it\u2019s why Reddit content keeps outperforming what most brands can do on their own sites.<\/p> The most important development from this earnings call for organic marketers is that Reddit is finally addressing the karma wall problem in public. It\u2019s something we\u2019ve been giving Reddit feedback on for over a year through our partnership.<\/p> Karma walls and age gates have made it nearly impossible for new accounts to participate in the subreddits that actually matter. If you tried to build a real Reddit presence in 2025, you hit this every day, with new employee accounts who couldn\u2019t post and mods who, completely understandably, didn\u2019t trust any new account because the spam problem was that bad.<\/p> Steve said it directly on the call. Reddit is \u201cworking our way out of age and Karma limits with better AI-powered spam protection to help protect communities from bad new users like spammers, but be welcoming to good new users.\u201d<\/p> This matters more than it sounds. Reddit has been working on this internally for over a year, and a lot of the patterns OGS sees in client work feed back into those conversations. Steve saying it publicly on an earnings call is a different signal entirely. It means the work is close enough to ship that they\u2019re willing to put their name on it in front of investors.<\/p> That\u2019s not Reddit testing whether to do something. That\u2019s Reddit telling you it\u2019s coming.<\/p> This is a related but separate barrier from the karma walls, and it actually matters more for brands trying to build something serious on Reddit.<\/p> Steve talked about Reddit needing to focus on what they\u2019re calling community success, basically how easy it is to create and grow a community on the platform. He was clear this isn\u2019t only an international issue, it includes the U.S.<\/p> This is something we run into on every brand engagement. If a brand wants to launch its own subreddit, the natural pattern is to create the brand account, create the subreddit, and start posting content to fill it. That content is going to be about the brand\u2019s product or category, because that\u2019s the whole point of the community.<\/p> The problem is that the pattern looks almost identical to what spammers and manipulators do when they\u2019re trying to game Reddit for search or LLM citations. They create the account, create the subreddit, post the content, all from the same source, all about one topic. Reddit\u2019s defenses are designed to catch exactly that, and for good reason.<\/p> But when Brand X does the same thing legitimately, they can get caught in the same net, even though they\u2019re not breaking any rules, and this is genuinely how a real community gets started. There isn\u2019t another way to launch a brand community on Reddit. You have to start with the brand account and the brand content.<\/p> Steve publicly acknowledging that community success is a problem Reddit needs to solve is a real signal for brands. They know the legitimate path looks like the bad path right now, and they\u2019re working on a way to tell them apart. That changes the math for any brand that\u2019s been holding off on launching its own community because they were worried about getting flagged.<\/p> There is no artificial intelligence without actual intelligence, and that intelligence has to come from real people having real conversations somewhere. Steve said almost exactly that on the call.<\/p> He went further when Justin Post asked about AI engines using Reddit data:<\/p> \u201cYou can get a surface level answer from AI, but you need the context. For many questions, there isn\u2019t an answer. There are multiple perspectives describing that answer and multiple reasons why different parts of that answer might be relevant to you or not.\u201d<\/p> <\/blockquote> That\u2019s the validation phase, almost word for word, how I\u2019ve been describing it to clients and on stage for nearly two years. The place in the user journey where people go to feel okay about a decision they\u2019re about to make, where they want context and nuance and other people\u2019s experiences, not a summary. There aren\u2019t many moments where you get to hear a public company CEO articulate the framework you\u2019ve been building your work around. Watching it happen on an earnings call was its own kind of validation.<\/p> This is a much bigger deal than most people are giving it credit for. The last few years of digital marketing have been everyone chasing what AI can do faster, cheaper, and at more scale. Reddit is the platform that bet on what AI can\u2019t do, which is generate authentic human conversation. As more of the internet gets summarized and optimized for attention by models, the value of real human discussion goes up, not down.<\/p> What\u2019s new is that Reddit\u2019s CEO is now making that the official corporate position. Steve and Jen both came back to the human voice argument multiple times during the call. They tied it to ad value, to user retention, to the AI deals, and to why brands should be on Reddit in the first place.<\/p> For marketers, the read is that Reddit isn\u2019t a trend you\u2019re trying to catch. It\u2019s the platform whose entire reason for being is now lining up with how people are actually using the internet in the AI era.<\/p> Since so many marketers are focused on the connection between Reddit, Google, and LLMs, it\u2019s important to note the Google and OpenAI deals are still in place and still valuable to both sides. Rich Greenfield asked, pointedly, whether the $50-60 million a year Reddit gets from those deals is enough given how important the data is. Steve didn\u2019t bite on a renegotiation question, but he didn\u2019t need to. He confirmed the relationships are mutual, active, and evolving.<\/p> The read for marketers is that the AI side of Reddit\u2019s business isn\u2019t a one-off windfall; it\u2019s a structural part of how AI gets trained and how AI answers questions. If you\u2019re trying to show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, or anywhere else an LLM is answering, Reddit is in the supply chain.<\/p> Search on Reddit itself was also called out as a real priority. Search WAUqs are up 30% year-over-year, and Reddit is putting actual engineering investment into making it better. People aren\u2019t only stumbling onto Reddit through Google anymore; they\u2019re going to Reddit on purpose to find things they can\u2019t get from a Google search or an LLM answer.<\/p> The part organic marketers should pay closest attention to is what\u2019s happening with Reddit Answers, Reddit\u2019s AI-powered search experience inside the platform. Steve said Reddit Answers is becoming more agentic, and gave specific examples. You can now ask it to compare two things, like \u201cshould I watch movie A or movie B,\u201d and they\u2019re integrating Reddit\u2019s product search catalog directly into the answers, so when you ask what\u2019s the best headphone, you get product links right inside the response.<\/p> This is the validation phase, moving inside Reddit itself. People used to go to Google, find a Reddit thread, click through, and read. Now, Reddit is offering to do the synthesis for them with the same human conversations underneath. That\u2019s a different shape of search, and it sits at exactly the moment in the buyer journey where decisions actually get made.<\/p> If you\u2019re an organic marketer, that changes how you should think about Reddit content, the same way pillar pages once changed how people thought about blog posts.<\/p> If you\u2019ve been waiting on Reddit because the platform felt too closed off, this is your sign. The walls are coming down, the growth math is real, and Reddit\u2019s strategic position around AI and human conversation is locking in publicly.<\/p> The next phase of marketing isn\u2019t another channel; it\u2019s being human in the places people go to find other humans. Reddit just made that the official strategy.<\/p> If you want to go deeper on what all this actually looks like in practice, I\u2019d point you to two recent webinars I did with Search Engine Journal. \u201c<\/span>Reddit Marketing in 2026: What Changed, What Actually Works Now\u201c\u00a0<\/span>covers the broader strategic shift, and the more recent \u201c<\/span>From Reddit to Revenue: Building Real Community That Drives Sales and AI Visibility\u201c\u00a0<\/span>gets into the practical side. Both pick up where this article leaves off.<\/p> And if you\u2019ve been struggling to figure out how to get on Reddit or make it actually work for your brand, that\u2019s literally what we do at OGS Media. Reach out at\u00a0<\/span>ogsmedia.com\u00a0<\/span>if you want to talk through it.<\/p> More Resources:<\/strong><\/p> Featured Image: Brent Csutoras\/Search Engine Journal<\/em><\/p> <\/div> Reddit,Social Strategy#Reddit #Earnings #Story #Marketers #Missed #sejournal #brentcsutoras1778251801<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was walking over to take the stage at SMMW 2026 in Anaheim, California, last Thursday, listening intently to Steve Huffman, founder and CEO of Reddit, talk about the last quarter at Reddit, but more importantly, to get a sense of what the focus would be for the rest of the year. Question after question, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[28802,318,872,28801,699,80,1014],"class_list":["post-7755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accessibility","tag-brentcsutoras","tag-earnings","tag-marketers","tag-missed","tag-reddit","tag-sejournal","tag-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reddit-growth-math-203.png\" "\\"The")
The Barriers Are Coming Down<\/h2>
![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reddit-barriers-817.png\" "\\"The")
Making It Easier To Start A Community<\/h2>
![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reddit-buyer-journey-581.png\" "\\"The")
The Human Voice Argument Is Now Official<\/h2>
![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reddit-human-voice-398.png\" "\\"The")
The AI Deals And Search Are Durable<\/h2>
![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reddit-ai-search-durable-832.png\" "\\"The")
What I Take From All This<\/h2>
![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/reddit-signals-761.png\" "\\"The")