Reddit Inc. spent more than a decade known as the internet's edgy bulletin board, a site where mostly anonymous users could post memes and share wild opinions on topics ranging from investing advice to Taylor Swift's love life. It was also a service many advertisers tended to avoid.
Now, six months into life as a publicly traded company, Reddit is winning over advertisers by showing that it's different than other internet platforms, which often rely on users' identities and personal information to target ads. Instead, Reddit is targeting people based on their interests, relying on the site's deeply detailed communities — called subreddits — to match advertisers with potential customers. Unlike many of its much larger advertising competitors, including Alphabet Inc.
's Google, Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
, Reddit has mostly anonymous users. That means the company can't always rely on personal information like gender or location to serve the ideal ad to the ideal customer. Also read: Reddit bans Microsoft Edge, DuckDuckGo and most search engines other than Google: Here's the reason But users who don't identify themselves tend to be more open and honest with their posts and their interests, said Jen Wong, Reddit's chief operating officer.
“When people come to Reddit, they reveal things about themselves that they would not reveal on other platforms,” said Wong, who joined Reddit in 2018 after holding the same title at Time Inc. The site's themed discussion forum.