Picture this: it’s been a long day of Meta Business Suite frustrations. All you want is to relax, maybe have me cheese and crackers. You then notice your cat eyeing the cheese with far too much determination. Being a responsible pet owner, you search “can cats eat cheese?”.
Quick search, quick results. Too many results. AI overview, sponsored listings, organic results, the list goes on… After a long day, you don’t have the brain space to figure out what’s actually worth clicking on.
So you try something else, you search for human responses. How? By adding to your search query where you know human answers will be present: Reddit. Suddenly, the results start making sense; genuine answers from actual humans, not content optimized within an inch of its life for SEO and AEO.
This scenario mad-libs to almost anything. Swap cheese for peppers, the cat for a toddler, “eat” for “smell.” The specifics don’t matter; what matters is the pattern. People are still searching, and they still want human answers, but the search landscape has changed enough that they’re adapting how they search to get them.
You could apply this to any search network, really, but for this article I will be specifically focusing on Reddit Ads. As I started the research for this article and my talk at Hero Conf 2026, I realised how truly unique Reddit as a platform is.
From starting as a link-sharing forum in 2005, to growing into one of the biggest social media platforms, to now being consistently one of the most cited sources by LLMs, Reddit has defied traditional definitions of what a social media platform is.
I call it the ‘Platypus Effect’, comparing the amalgamation of search, social, and AI source citing to the weird and wonderful egg-laying mammal that at first impression shocked scientists.
Reddit is where search, social, and beyond collide. Your Marketing Strategy has to keep up with all its uniqueness.
An Audience Unlike Any Other
One of Reddit’s biggest strengths is that its audience doesn’t behave like any other social platform’s audience. Instagram is aspirational and curated (even “dumps” are aesthetic). TikTok moves at Gen Z speed, all rapid micro-trends and an algorithm running on nothing but cold brew. And Facebook is where family albums and local community updates live. But Reddit is different.
On Reddit, users (Redditors) rarely go by their real names; it’s pseudonyms, gamer tags, forum handles. ‘Throwaway accounts’ are common, with the same person having multiple accounts, each for a unique purpose,
Why? Because on Reddit, who you are matters less than what you say and where you say it (hello, karma relevancy points). Reddit accepts everyone, including anyone who doesn’t want to be known as someone.
That’s not just an observation; the numbers back it up. According to business.reddit.com, a significant share of Redditors can’t be found on other platforms:
- 75% aren’t on Snapchat
- 75% aren’t on LinkedIn
- 61% aren’t on Pinterest
- 53% aren’t on Twitter/X
- 38% aren’t on TikTok
- 36% aren’t on Instagram
- 28% aren’t on Facebook
This is where my background as a social anthropologist joins with my love of data. I look at those stats and simply ask, why are there such a large number of users that are exclusively on Reddit?
To answer that question, I believe you have to look at the differentiator of each platform, and you’ll see how Reddit’s features can be embraced by so many different types of users. Below is a table I created comparing the different social media platforms and why some users may prefer Reddit over others.
Audience Community Targeting
This leads to Reddit’s next strength: audience targeting that’s simply unmatched. Reddit is built around communities (subreddits), of which there are over 100,000 active communities and there is possibly a subreddit for every niche imaginable.
And if there isn’t one yet, it’s probably being built or has already been banned.
Take r/dataisbeautiful and its counterpart, r/dataisugly. It’s entirely plausible the same person, let’s say a marketer who loves a well-designed chart but also enjoys laughing at the odd terrible one, sits in both. That’s two separate targeting opportunities for one audience. Go a step further, and you’ll find r/learndatascience and r/learndataanalytics, aimed at people still learning rather than working professionals. For a SaaS brand, that’s now two distinct audiences reachable through three different angles, all from one product.
Major Updates to Targeting
This collision between search and social on Reddit Ads is only getting sharper. This year, there’s been three major updates to targeting on Reddit Ads, which utilise the platform’s uniqueness as a search and social platform combination.
- Conversation Targeting, one of Reddit’s more advanced 2026 features, doesn’t just match keywords; it reads the sentiment and context of live discussions, so you can reach people actively engaging positively with a related topic.
- Contextual Keyword Targeting has had a similar AI upgrade this year, matching ads against comments and posts with far more precision than the earlier version of the feature.
- Then there’s MAX Campaigns, Reddit’s newer campaign type that flips the model entirely. Instead of you pre-selecting subreddits, keywords, and interests, MAX dynamically identifies likely converters from conversational signals, community participation patterns, and real-time intent in comments and posts. It’s arguably the clearest evidence yet that this isn’t a passing overlap between search and social; Reddit is actively building the infrastructure to automate that blend.
Final Thoughts – Where Search and Social Finally Meet
We’ve covered how search behaviour has shifted to include social, human-sourced results. Reddit is where that shift becomes an actual advertising opportunity: you can target by audience, the way you would on Facebook, and by keyword, the way you would on Google. As of writing, Reddit is the only platform that lets you do both at once.
My advice to Paid Social Marketers? When you pitch Reddit Ads as a platform, don’t focus on the details of whether Reddit is a social network or a search platform. Instead, highlight the uniqueness of Reddit audiences and how targeting on Reddit Ads combines the best of both audience and keyword targeting.
