THE POWER OF REDDIT
- AND THE BRANDS WINNING ON IT
In partnership with
28 August 2026
Introduction
We may live in the age of AI, but humans still win out, which is why Reddit is thriving right now. User numbers are soaring with over 514m people active each week on the platform as of July 2026 - up 24% year-on-year.
People are using Reddit as a source of human truth; a place to find real answers about everything from “what should I watch next?" to “what is the best buggy for two kids?”
When it comes to deciding what to buy, consumers are turning to human conversations more than ever. This need for human validation is being driven by the fact that AI now powers so much discovery.
Half of Google searches now have AI summaries, a figure expected to rise to more than 75% by 2028. Meanwhile, a McKinsey survey found that half of consumers use AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT.
However, the speedy suggestions served by AI is leaving consumers feeling that they need further validation.
“People, more and more, in our summarised and sanitised world, are seeking opinions, recommendations, points of view from fellow humans, not just an AI summary or answer,” Reddit EVP for Global Advertising Sales Stephen Riad told The Media Leader in June.
THE VALIDATION GAP
Reddit calls this a “validation gap”, where consumers seek human nuance, facts, and pros and cons before purchasing AI driven recommendations.
At MAD//Fest London, Hannah Walker, Director for Mid-Market Sales at Reddit, used the example of buying a new car.
“People might start their search in ChatGPT but they want a community of experts that have driven thousands of miles in these cars to tell them whether they're making the right decision,” she explained.
The results of Reddit’s Path to Purchase survey 2026 found that a whopping 79% of people who start with AI go on to use other sources, and 93% verify recommendations before acting on them.
And Reddit has become the home for that validation - which has seen its usage soar. This has resulted in Reddit overtaking TikTok to become the UK’s fourth most visited social media service.
Three in five Brits online now encounter the site, up from a third in 2023, according to Ofcom.
how does it work?
Reddit is home to thousands of communities, endless conversation, and authentic human connection. With over 26 billion posts and comments, and more than 130 million daily active uniques, Reddit is one of the internet’s largest sources of information
The network houses more than 100,000 community spaces, or ‘subreddits’ where people come together around different interests or experiences. Whether you’re into breaking news, sports, TV fan theories or kitchen gadgets, there’s a community on Reddit for you.
Reddit is all about “the we rather than the me”, says Senior Community Manager Imogen Maric. Unlike other social platforms it does not focus on individual personas or personal branding, it prioritises the “we mentality” and is all about community.
Although each community has a human moderator who sets and enforces culture within their space by approving or removing posts, the network is democratic with users upvoting, downvoting and reporting content to foster safe, intelligent human conversations at scale.
Every day, millions of people around the world post, vote, and comment in communities.
Alongside providing valuable validation for consumers, Reddit’s wealth of human opinion is also an invaluable source for brands.
Marketing guru Mark Ritson described a subreddit as “what would happen if a press release, an NPS report and a focus-group transcript had a baby” in his Drum column in May 2026, and he’s not wrong.
Matthew Gerrard, Head of International Creative Strategy at KarmaLab - Reddit's in-house creative strategy team - used his session at MAD//Fest to invite brands to use the platform as “the ultimate focus group at your fingertips” to help build “better, more relevant campaigns”.
SONOS
Audio specialist Sonos is one brand that has taken full advantage of this. The brand sent in its own community manager - Keith - into the popular Sonos subreddit where he talks about products, gives feedback, and helps users with technical issues.
However, the real benefit is the feedback that Keith brings back into the business. It’s a real-time temperature check on what customers love, what they hate, and what new products they’d like to see.
Sonos even brings in senior executives including CEO Tom Conrad to host AMAs (Ask Me Anything) and interact with users directly.
It uses the subreddit as an unfiltered testing ground for product development, and even undertakes beta testing in the community.
Reddit was the place where Sonos sought customer input following its controversial app update last year. Conrad told Tech Radar earlier this year: “I've been on Reddit…describing the changes and asking our customers there to give us feedback about their own experience learning to use Sonos and living with it every day.
“We will roll changes out to our beta channel and even there, our users will be able to opt into the experience...We've already learned a lot from the perspective of our customers on Reddit after my invitation to them [recently] to share their thoughts."
Reddit has fundamentally changed how Sonos communicates with its users, and has helped to boost the brand.
Reddit’s Walker says: “The sentiment increase that Sonos has seen in their community since has been huge and they're creating this advocacy at scale which is driving business results for them too.”
Reddit has become the place that people go for trusted, no-holds-bar reviews.
KarmaLab’s Gerrard says that the fact that the word Reddit is appended to a Google search over 270 times a second demonstrates how the platform has become “the unofficial recommendation engine of the internet”.
People trust Reddit as a source of information as it is devoid of corporate filtering and its democratic voting system means popular opinion rises to the top. When asking for recommendations, users get a true picture of what products or services are like, and hear the negative as well as the positive.
DOVE
Dove, a brand that has made ‘real beauty’ its USP, harnessed the power of Reddit’s reviews in its r/eal Reviews campaign for its Intensive Repair 10-in-1 Serum Mask earlier this year.
The Unilever-owned brand invited Reddit users to review the product publicly and committed to publishing the first 50 responses unedited in the ad campaign - good or bad.
Amid many positive posts were reviews that said the hair mask smelled like “expired hotel shampoo” and “like an old lady”.
Dove stayed true to its word and included those posts within the campaign, which ran across social and out-of-home.
The ad launched in New York with a two-day pop-up at the Flatiron Plaza, where oversized reviews were displayed alongside product sampling. Further outdoor advertising ran across the city, and testimonial-style films in which anonymised Redditors read their own reviews aloud were pushed across social media.
Dove US Head of Beauty & Wellbeing Emily Barfoot said: “With r/eal reviews we leant into what consumers trust most - real opinions from real people.
“The concept was rooted in a strong strategic platform and bold idea, designed to show up where real influence is being shaped today.
“Platforms like Reddit are no longer just conversation spaces. They’re where opinions are formed, shared and continuously referenced. By leaning into authentic reviews, we could amplify credible, consumer-led proof of our mask’s superiority in a way that would be trusted and far-reaching.
“Transparency wasn’t a risk, it was our strategy, and it reflects a shift to how influence is earned today – away from polished endorsements and towards credibility built through real experience.”
The campaign, which won six Cannes Lions awards this year, racked up more than a billion earned impressions and helped the product become the bestselling hair mask in the US during its duration.
Barfoot says the campaign’s success was proof that transparency, creator culture, authentic community engagement drive Desire At Scale.
Reddit’s very real human reviews and recommendations are driving purchase decisions.
The Path to Purchase survey found that 2 in 3 UK Redditors are open to considering a new brand if they discover a recommendation in a community.
No place is that seen more clearly than in the world of beauty where users have flocked to Reddit to discover which “wonder product” actually does what it says on the tin - or stylishly-designed bottle.
More than half of UK Reddit users are women and its internal research found that 71% have a personal interest in skincare, beauty and cosmetics, prompting higher traffic for beauty subreddits.
Walker says: “Instagram will tell you that you need a 20-step skincare routine. Reddit is where you come to dispel those myths and find ingredients and brands that will work for you.”
Half of UK users say they are looking for the honest truth that AI just can’t provide and that there is 4 times more trust in Reddit than in LLMs for final purchase decisions. Fundamentally, people trust people.
Given that people are coming to Reddit to do research before they buy, the platform has high-intent users and around 40% of conversations on the platform are commercial in nature with people actively discussing products, services and purchase decisions.
The combination of highly engaged communities and commercial intent has inevitably been a big pull for advertisers and has led Reddit’s ad revenue to surge 74% to $2.1bn over the past year.
The platform has made it easy for brands to reach users and promote their products with native ad solutions within communities.
Levi's
Levi’s has long been an advertiser on Reddit, which has helped it reach culture-driven consumers and strengthen its leadership in denim.
During its high-profile partnership with Beyoncé, it used a full-funnel approach to drive awareness, consideration and purchase. Levi’s employed high impact takeovers to drive visibility, targeted auction media to reach relevant fashion-savvy Redditors, and used video, image and carousel ads to bring the collection to life.
Lower down the funnel, it employed Dynamic Products Ads to automatically promote Levi products across relevant placements to help boost conversion.
This activity helped to drive a 12x higher ad awareness lift and led to conversion activity surging past previous results.
Reddit’s Walker explains that Levi’s has further bridged the gap between discovery and decision in recent campaigns on the platform by scraping genuine positive sentiment about its brand and products and housing it underneath its ad format.
She says: “You can be discovering the new Grunge range while also seeing Redditor positive sentiment posts where users can dive in and build that confidence before they go and make their decision.”
VALIDATION DOESN’T END AT THE CHECKOUT
What makes Reddit unique is the long-term nature of posts. Unlike traditional review sites, people don’t simply leave a one-off review and forget about it.
On Reddit, the post lives on. The original poster can, and often does, come back with new insights months and years later.
Almost half of Redditors visit the platform for stories of long-term product quality that AI can’t provide, according to its research.
There are even subreddits dedicated to this, such as r/buyitforlife, where Redditors come to share recommendations of products that have stood the test of time and been handed down for generations. Brands like Le Creuset and Sonos fare well here.
These customers are providing post-purchase proof and advocacy that inspires others to buy. It’s plain to see in the r/Sonos thread how invested people stay after purchase. This community is the place where loyalty deepens and brands can keep earning trust.
Reddit’s Director for Mid Market Sales UK Hannah Walker and Head of Insights, EMEA & AUNZ Rob Turnbull share their simple steps for brands to thrive on the platform.