Reddit launches new tools for tracking trends and advertising AMAs

The updates, announced Tuesday at CES, aim to show contextually relevant real-time mentions of brand, topics and categories so marketers know where to focus both paid and organic content. Pro Trends is powered by several machine learning tools such as named entity recognition, which uses natural language processing to help advertisers track more than 100,000 “smart” keywords. (For example, it would help a marketer to know when a user or subreddit is talking about “apple” the fruit versus Apple the company.)

Advertisers large and small alike — such as the NBA and Wayfair — have beta-tested Reddit Pro Trends for real-time and longitudinal analytics. Jim Squires, Reddit’s EVP of business marketing and growth, said the company sees attracting SMB advertisers as a “huge opportunity” and “huge focus” for the platform in 2025. He cited a small brand called Yes Milady that used Reddit to find local vegan communities that might be interested in their vegan spices. Other examples of early testers include the NBA and Wayfair.

“What’s really special and unique here are the conversations that happen in all communities across Reddit,” Squires said.

Of course, Reddit isn’t the first platform to offer ways to help marketers track user trends. Google Trends has been a market feeder for years, while others like Pinterest and TikTok also have their own features for their specific platforms and user bases. However, marketers see the appeal of having multiple ways to analyze Reddit’s text-focused nature, which can be especially useful since Reddit’s language is often unique to the platform.

The ability to analyze content has major implications for understanding user interests and other areas such as brand safety and ad targeting. Since 2022, Reddit’s acquired three AI startups—Memorable AI, MeaningCloud, and Spiketrap—which have helped build new internal tools for audience insights, text analytics, and advertising.

Reddit Pro gives advertisers visibility into the conversations they’re in that they should be in, said Rob Gaige, Reddit’s head of global insights. He also noted that advertisers could use it to gain a foothold with new users, new groups and potential customers or build on existing brand equity.

“That’s really the magic of how Reddit Pro works: It shows you where you are,” Gaige said. “You can double it, but it shows you where you need to be and gives you a strategy for how to go into that conversation.”

One way advertisers can use Reddit Pro Trends is to identify audiences who buy a takeover ad, said Jack Johnston, Tinuiti’s senior social innovation director, who noted the “raw” and “ordy” nature of the platform. Advertisers can also use it to analyze conversations to see if brand mentions are out of date, lead to new conversations, or perhaps generate new interest in an improved product that previous customers didn’t like.

“It’s very descriptive and it’s meant to be a conversational forum,” Johnston said. “… What’s different is that the other platforms are very impactful and real-time. There’s not as much of a real-time aspect to Reddit.”

Despite Reddit’s user base being smaller than other platforms, Reddit is “one of the last text-based sources of truth on the Internet,” said Erik Hamilton, vice president of search and social at digital agency Good Apple.

“Adding ‘reddit’ to the end of any Google query is almost second nature to many of us,” Hamilton noted. “The Pro Trends tool will be an invaluable look at what real users are saying, but given the smaller scale and volatile nature of trending topics, I wonder if the results will be less revealing than hoped. Either way, I’m excited to see what it looks like.”

The news builds on Reddit’s other recent updates powered by different types of AI. Last month, it debuted a new conversation search tool that helps users more easily find answers in Reddit without relying on Google. (AI search could also potentially pave the way for new ad formats in search.) Last year, the company also announced new data licensing deals with Google and OpenAI, which use Reddit content to help train their own large language models.

The updates signal that Reddit wants to be taken seriously when it comes to winning over ad dollars, emarketer analyst Jeremy Goldman said. The new AMA ads are among the first Reddit ad formats that feel truly native. Pro Trends could help marketers “understand the underbelly of Internet culture.”

The updates aren’t just about data, Goldman said: They can also help advertisers break into communities without “feeling like corporate overlords.” So far, this has often been one of the biggest challenges, as passionate users are also often the first to smell and repel any whiff of “corporate insincerity.” However, treating Reddit as a “research round instead of a minefield” could pay off.

“Reddit’s ad evolution won’t be complete until it bridges the gap between brand expectations and user authenticity,” Goldman said. “If it can walk the tightrope, Reddit might just become the digital marketer’s unlikely hero — and not just another platform trying to monetize engagement metrics.”