• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, 9 hours ago

Collective knowledge from more than 22 billion posts and comments across Reddit's human conversations has become the backbone for what the company calls structured intelligence.

Reddit Community Intelligence, which uses generative artificial intelligence (GAI), launched this week at Cannes Lions.

The engine powers products and insights that turn content and sentiment from billions of posts into fodder to feed tools that are geared for advertisers and marketers.

The first social-listening tool within Community Intelligence -- Reddit Insights -- identifies and analyzes the meaning and the value of words, phrases and other terms within the conversations that make up the billions of posts across Reddit. 

Publicis, an early tester of the product, has seen success using Reddit Insights for clients such as The Hershey Company and Comcast.

Conversation Summary Add-ons, an ad product feature that dynamically integrates content from Reddit users directly below an advertiser’s creative, places community conversations in the user experience.

Early tests for this format have shown a click-through rate (CTR) more than 19% higher than standard image ads. The tests for this format also showed that it raised ad relevance and built deeper connections between brands and communities.

Reddit claims that the company’s name is the sixth-most-searched term on Google. As search options increase through synthetic content and artificial intelligence (AI), consumers are searching for authenticity.

Many users find authenticity on Reddit, according to the company. Eighty-eight percent of social media users say they turn to Reddit for purchase decisions, and 76% believe its posts are more honest and truthful than those on other social platforms.

Ahead of Cannes Lions, Reddit released data that outlines the value of conversations for brands seeking to boost their advertising performance.

One of the more interesting stats involves automative-related questions. Among all Reddit posts served via Google and AI search results for the top 20 automotive-related questions, all posts received views each day since they were posted as far back as 2023.

Some 57% of all Reddit posts that get views for more than one year mention a brand or a product. Admittedly, that is an extremely high percentage.

An increase of one positive post per week by Reddit users is associated with a 1% increase in attributed site traffic.

Reddit’s data also shows that when brands advertise on the platform, it affects their entire media plan. The company’s most recent media mix-modeling analysis shows that in partnership with TransUnion, ads help technology advertisers achieve more than $6.94 in return on ad spend (ROAS).

About 11% of impact comes from boosting other channels, and Reddit spend seems to drive about 1.6% lift in marketing sales.

When Reddit ads are paired with TV, video, paid search and digital, with 64% of ads running on its platform a synergistic impact occurs, analysis found.

After years of ups and downs, Reddit may have figured out how its model should work with backing from Advance Publications, which also owns Condé Nast.

Advance Publications remains the largest shareholder, holding 30% of Reddit, according to Google AI Mode. Tencent, based in China, owns 11% of Reddit, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is Reddit's third-largest shareholder, owning approximately 9%.

OpenAI and Reddit have a data deal. The partnership allows OpenAI to train its models on Reddit data. OpenAI has brought Reddit content to its products and explored new AI-powered features for Reddit users and moderators. OpenAI also became a Reddit advertising partner. 

Shareholders always seem to provide a sense of where the company is going and how it will end up.