Why Reddit advertising belongs in your media plan

Reddit advertising series · Part 1 of 3

Ask most marketers about Reddit and you’ll hear the same thing: it’s a forum for gamers, tech fans and people arguing about films. That picture is years out of date. Reddit is now one of the biggest platforms in the UK, and it’s where people go when they want an honest answer before they buy.

That makes it one of the best places to reach the right people at the right time. And you don’t need to post, comment or build a following to use it. In this three-part series we explain why Reddit deserves a place on your media plan, how the advertising works, and what to watch out for.

Reddit is now mainstream in the UK

Ofcom’s latest Online Nation report found that 29.4 million UK adults visited Reddit in May 2025. That’s 60% of adults who are online, up 28% on the year before and 88% in two years. Reddit is now the fourth-biggest social media and video platform in the UK.

Young adults are there in force. More than three in four 18 to 24-year-olds (77%) visited Reddit in May 2025. But with 60% of all online adults using it, this is no longer a niche audience.

The growth isn’t just a UK story. Worldwide, around 130 million people use Reddit every day and more than 500 million every week, and daily users outside the US grew 28% in a year.

People go to Reddit with a purpose

Most social platforms are built for scrolling. Reddit is built for asking. Research by Reddit and WPP Media found that 72% of Redditors arrive actively looking for information, and 64% come with a specific goal in mind.

A lot of that is shopping research. One in three Redditors regularly use Reddit to research products before they buy. And 79% say they research more before buying than they did a year ago, compared with 68% of people generally.

This is what “the right people at the right time” looks like. Someone reading a thread called “best running shoes for flat feet?” or “what’s the best CRM for a small sales team?” isn’t idly scrolling. They’re making a decision. Other platforms have to interrupt people to get their attention. On Reddit, they’ve already come looking.

It’s where people go for the honest answer

Trust is the thing most ads struggle with, and it’s Reddit’s biggest strength. People trust it because the answers come from other customers, not from brands.

Reddit’s 2026 Path to Purchase study, carried out by the research company Attest with 6,485 UK adults, shows how far that trust goes:

Half of UK shoppers in the study said they go to Reddit for “the honest truth” about a product, brand or service. And Reddit came out ahead of both ChatGPT and Gemini as the place that helped people buy with confidence.

That’s a powerful place for your ad to appear: right beside the conversations people trust most, at the moment they’re deciding.

Reddit shapes what AI tells your customers

More and more people start their research by asking ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI Mode. Those tools need real human opinions to answer questions like “which is the best…?”, and they get a lot of them from Reddit.

A study by Peec AI, covering 30 million sources, found Reddit is the most-cited website across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. Ofcom’s report points to the same trend. So the conversations happening on Reddit today are shaping what AI tells your customers tomorrow.

Reddit’s own AI search is growing fast too. Reddit Answers went from 1 million to 15 million weekly users in a year.

What this means for your media plan

If your customers research before they buy, a good share of them are already on Reddit. They’re reading what other people say about your category, your competitors and maybe you. Yet many UK marketers still haven’t tested it.

And you don’t have to become a Redditor to benefit. You don’t need to post, comment or build a following. We can run the campaigns for you, from the first idea to the final ads, while you get on with running your business.