Reddit is leaning hard into what it calls "community intelligence" — the idea that its massive trove of discussions is better for purchase research than AI chatbots. At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week, the company unveiled three new ad products designed to capitalize on that.
First up: Shopping List Ads, the platform's first multi-advertiser ad format. These appear alongside threads where users are comparing options and seeking recommendations, showing products from multiple brands in one card. Then there's the Free-form ad generator, which uses a brand's website and relevant Reddit discussions to auto-generate native ads that match the community's tone, complete with suggested headlines and images tailored to specific subreddits and audience profiles. Finally, Redditor Highlights — previously in testing — is now open to all brands, letting them feature positive user posts and summaries about their products directly in ads.
Reddit's ad business has been booming. In Q1 of this year, the company reported $625 million in ad revenue, up 74% year-over-year. COO Jen Wong says the platform's authority comes from its collective wisdom, not individual creators. "On Reddit, the community is the influencer," Wong said, pointing to the platform's over 250 billion posts and comments. She explained that Reddit uses signals like community structure, moderation, and discussion quality to identify valuable conversations. "It's the collective that creates this repository of wisdom that helps others."