Reddit has overtaken TikTok to become the UK’s fourth most visited social media service. The push reflects changes in search engines, Gen Z behavior and the way value and relevance are being redistributed on the internet.
Over the last two years, the platform has seen 88% growth in reach among British internet users. Three in five people online in the country access the site today, compared to a third in 2023.
The advancement is even more relevant among young people. Among users aged 18 to 24, Reddit is already the sixth most visited organization in the country, rising from tenth position in just one year. More than 75% of this age group frequents the platform regularly.
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Part of this acceleration is linked to an objective change in Google’s algorithms. Like , the decision to prioritize useful content from forums and human discussions changed the flow of traffic and repositioned Reddit at the center of information discovery.
There is also a commercial and strategic vector. The agreement that allows Google to train its AI models with data from Reddit has increased the platform’s visibility in so-called AI Overviews. Reddit is already the most cited source in these automated summaries. The company has a similar agreement with OpenAI, owner of ChatGPT.
This repositioning has direct implications for the monetization model. By strengthening its presence in discovery streams and integrating its conversational data into the AI ecosystem, Reddit is now placing itself more aggressively in the competition for performance advertising dollars.
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By passing on this information at the beginning of January, the Traffic lights noted that in an environment increasingly dominated by algorithmic feeds, short-form video and closed platforms, Reddit has come to be seen by analysts as a rare asset: consistent revenue growth combined with relevance to the development of artificial intelligence.
According to an article published by Tube filter In December, Reddit’s ad revenue for the second quarter of 2025 reached $465 million, up from $253.1 million a year earlier. The percentage growth surpassed Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and Snapchat.
The United Kingdom is already Reddit’s second largest market, behind only the United States. The expansion axis, in turn, is increasingly international. Today, the platform has 60.1 million daily users outside the USA, compared to 50.3 million in the American market.
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A relevant part of this growth comes from Brazil. Alongside France and Spain, the country accounted for half of recent international expansion. In November, the Estadão shared the data and revealed how Reddit silently structured its local operation, formed between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. The team operates in a hybrid model, distributed across several cities, based in Brasília.
“Reddit already had a solid ecosystem of Brazilian communities, and our priority was to preserve the health of these communities”, Roberto Braga, the company’s growth director in Brazil, explained to the column. “We follow a local growth strategy, supported by global product and policy capabilities, to ensure cultural fit and compliance.”
This movement occurs at a specific moment in the digital cycle. As content becomes increasingly optimized for scale and algorithmic distribution, the demand for human interaction, context, and belonging grows. This is the central paradox of artificial intelligence in the media.
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In Brazil, this dilemma tends to be intensified by an additional factor: the role of sports communities, which combine identity, recurrence and deep engagement. It is at this intersection between AI, communities and sport that Reddit can find its greatest strategic leverage in the country.
Encouraging less passive behavior by sports fans
At the end of October, the Grand Prix, the largest motorsport and motorcycling media and events group in Brazil, announced a content partnership with Reddit. The collaboration gained traction a few weeks later, during the São Paulo GP.
On that occasion, Victor Martins, CEO of the GP, told me that, throughout the race weekend, more than 50 pieces of content, much of it exclusive and behind-the-scenes, were made available on Reddit. The strategy included cross-promotion with the GP’s own broadcasts, directing audiences from traditional channels to subreddits.
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According to Braga, there are more than a dozen active motorsport communities in the country. r/F1Brasil, for example, recorded 28 million views in the Brazilian market alone between January and November 2025, according to Reddit Insights data provided by Community Intelligence Brasil.
Public behavior helps explain these numbers. “Fans use Reddit as a real-time companion,” says Braga. They seek expert analysis, behind-the-scenes context, humor, memes and practical information, such as broadcast times, where to watch and purchase tickets. It is consumption guided by utility, not by impulsiveness.
This dense engagement model, based on text and collective discussion, is the core of the platform’s competitive differentiator. Analyzing growth in the UK, media analyst Sofie Sue Rutgeerts notes that Reddit works precisely because it doesn’t offer a single, pasteurized answer. It forces the user to read, compare perspectives, filter and decide for themselves.
This cognitive effort, Rutgeerts argues, has a psychological value that generates a deeper and more valuable connection than passive scrolling in video feeds.
As Braga reminds us, Reddit’s culture prioritizes authenticity, transparency and genuine human perspectives: “It’s not a follower-centric platform.”
In the United Kingdom, the number of Premier League fans who watch matches while following their club’s subreddit in real time is growing. THE The Guardian reported that the league’s subreddit surpassed one billion views last year, according to data from the platform itself.
The same pattern appears in women’s football, historically undercovered by traditional media. Views of the subreddits dedicated to the Arsenal women’s team and the Lionesses doubled in the period, reinforcing the platform’s role as a space for in-depth study where formal coverage does not reach.
In Brazil, football does not yet operate on this scale on the platform, but it may begin to gain attention. Before my conversation with Braga at the end of last year, I learned that Reddit had started approaching the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF). He disagreed, limiting himself to stating that sport “remains a priority vertical” and that “we are exploring additional collaborations where we see clear value for the community.”
The cautious stance hides an opportunity. The Grand Prix case creates a replicable model for leagues and publishers. In it, Reddit operates as an organic and permanent second screen, which precedes, accompanies and extends the discussion about the main event.
“The format focuses on topics about specific sports, teams and athletes, bringing together passionate fans regardless of location,” explains Braga. “It encourages highly engaged conversations that last far beyond a single game weekend.”
Performance advertising enters the center of the strategy
During CES 2026, held in the first week of January in Las Vegas, Reddit presented Max Campaigns, an advertising platform with artificial intelligence that automates the entire media buying process, as initially reported by Adweek.
The launch repositions the company in the competition for performance advertising funds, now exploring more directly its most valuable asset: data derived from real conversations between users.
In A/B tests with more than 600 advertisers, the company claims to have recorded an average 17% reduction in cost per acquisition and a 27% increase in conversions. A case study with Brooks Running shows a 37% drop in cost per click over a three-week period.
In the product, the State of Streaming assesses that Reddit enters more explicitly into the territory dominated by Google and Meta, expanding investments to capture a larger share of the advertising market. The bet is on the combination of automation, transparency and a difference that is difficult to replicate: conversations based on explicit intention, organized in communities.
The reading is connected to the projections released by Adweek for 2026. Experts interviewed by the publication point out that artificial intelligence should dominate advertising workflows, as brands accelerate the adoption of automated media buying. Advertising and technology executives point out that chatbots are beginning to undermine the role of social platforms in media discovery.
UGC, AI and the fight for control of value
With more than 400 million monthly active users, Reddit has established itself as one of the largest forums on the internet and, now, as a centerpiece in the new artificial intelligence economy.
Almost two years ago, on the eve of its IPO, the company received a notification related to the agreement signed with Google to train AI models. At the time, the use of user-generated content without explicit authorization or adequate remuneration opened up a diffuse legal territory, a true AI regulatory Wild West.
Since then, the movement has intensified. Platforms that grew supported by UGC began to reconfigure their business models to capture value in the wave of generative AI.
Reddit, Tumblr and WordPress were cited by Virginie Berger as clear examples of the asymmetry of these agreements. According to the specialist in innovation, copyright and intellectual property, there is no evidence that the billion-dollar contracts signed with big techs include any form of revenue sharing with creators. Reddit alone guaranteed $60 million annually in the deal with Google.
At the time, Berger questioned the legitimacy of these contracts based on two central premises. First, this was never the implied agreement when users created their accounts and started posting content. Second, the material traded is the result of public work, produced collectively, and not a classic proprietary asset of the platform.
The case of Reddit highlights an old dichotomy in the behavior of these companies. At the same time that they adopt self-exemption regarding what is published by users, they claim ownership of this data when it comes to monetizing and licensing it commercially.
In an interview with The GuardianJen Wong, Reddit’s chief operating officer, said the company is focused on getting users to the platform directly, rather than through search engines. In the same speech, he positioned Reddit as a counterpoint to content generated by artificial intelligence, by reinforcing the value of human and contextual conversations.
In Brazil, the narrative is one of caution. Braga says that Reddit has been actively involved in discussions about data use and training AI models with the aim of protecting users’ rights and the integrity of the platform:
“Our initial focus is responsible growth. We are open to exploring opportunities that preserve privacy, create clear value for communities, and respect local regulations and expectations.”
The discussion facing the market is to define who controls, captures and redistributes the value generated by communities in an environment where data, conversations and intention are driving the digital economy.
And Reddit can anticipate what should soon become industry-wide standard.
