Reddit took the stage at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to announce a suite of new ad products built on what it calls "community intelligence." As AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT and Google's SGE muscle into shopping and recommendations, Reddit is positioning itself as the human-powered companion for real consumer research — a place where actual people debate and decide.
The new tools are threefold. Shopping List Ads is Reddit's first multi-brand ad format, showing products alongside discussions where users compare options and ask for advice. Free-form ad generator uses a brand's website and relevant Reddit threads to automatically create native ads that match the community's tone, then recommends titles and images tailored to specific subreddits and audience segments. Redditor Highlights is now open to all brands, letting them feature positive user posts about their products or company directly in ads.
Reddit's advertising business has been on a tear. In the first quarter of this year, ad revenue hit $625 million — up 74 percent from the same period last year. COO Jen Wong explained that unlike platforms built around individual creators, Reddit's authority comes from collective intelligence. With over 25 billion posts and comments, Reddit uses signals like community structure, moderation, and discussion quality to identify valuable conversations. "On Reddit," Wong said, "the community is the influencer."