Reddit’s new AI ad tool, Max, shows the UK’s fourth most-used social media platform is ‘stepping into the ring’ with Google and Meta, says Niki Chana, programmatic director at SBS.
Today (5 January), Reddit announced that it has been trialling a tool that automates advertising on the platform — and can even generate ads couched in ‘trending Redditor lingo’ — which has on average achieved 27% more clicks for brands.
The discussion platform says Max uses AI and Reddit’s own data to ‘optimise campaign settings in real-time’.
Max automates targeting, creative selection and rotation, placements, and budget allocation. It can also adapt or generate ‘Reddit-ready’ creative assets, or copy that mimics the language of popular Reddit posts.
In the coming weeks, Reddit says it will add a reporting feature called Top Audience Personas, which will tell advertisers about the types of audiences viewing and interacting with their ads the most, such as new parents or home cooks. Reddit can also provide data about what else those audience segments are looking at on the platform.
Future iterations of Max will also include AI tools for cropping videos from other platforms, according to Reddit.
‘Reddit has stepped into the ring with Meta and Google,’ said Chana. ‘It’s at an intermediate point between social media and a news site. It’s really authentic and rich in conversations when on some platforms there’s a decline in trust. Users on Reddit are sick of fake news and they value true, honest opinions.’
‘I love that Reddit have created their own proprietary technology,’ she added. ‘It’s exciting to see another player on the scene.’
She explained that brands are looking to Reddit with interest as a mid-funnel point of advertising where advertisers can talk directly to communities that fit their brand.
‘Reddit’s a place where brands are looking for loyalty as well as a smattering of truth,’ she said. ‘Brands are seeing it as a performance channel.’
The new tool comes at a great time for Reddit, with a 19% increase in daily active users year on year, according to its Q3 results, and an Ofcom report last month revealing that three-in-five UK residents now use Reddit. This means that Reddit has overtaken TikTok to become the fourth most-visited social media platform in the UK (following YouTube, Facebook and Messenger, and Instagram), according to data gathered by Ofcom last May.
The beta version of Max is already available to select advertisers. A release from Reddit claims that one of the 600 alpha tests of Max campaigns resulted in a 37% decrease in costs per click and 27% more clicks while making no manual changes over the course of a 21-day campaign. Overall, the company states that ‘early testers saw 17% lower CPA and 27% more conversions on average’.
‘If they do it well, I think they could become a really strong product,’ Chana concluded. ‘But if it’s poorly executed they could risk being seen as another entity trying to launch a product to the market to improve performance.’
This post was updated to include comments from Niki Chana on 05/01/26.
