--- title: "Reddit’s Q3 2026 results: what the numbers mean for marketers" description: "Reddit ad revenue grew 54% while US daily users fell 2% and Google sent less traffic. What that means for Reddit ads, SEO and AI answers." url: https://dumbcmo.com/blog/reddit-q3-2026-results-for-marketers category: "Paying to be seen" tags: ["news", "reddit", "reddit ads", "earnings", "seo", "ai search"] published: 2026-10-31 updated: 2026-10-31 reading_time: 11 min author: "The DumbCMO" --- # Reddit’s Q3 2026 results: what the numbers mean for marketers > **TL;DR:** Reddit made $895M in Q3 2026, up 53%, and ad revenue hit $847M. But US daily users slipped 2%, Google referrals are falling fast, and Reddit plans to go logged-in only. Translation: Reddit ads are getting stronger, free Google traffic via Reddit is getting weaker. [Notebook](https://dumbcmo.com) › [Blog](https://dumbcmo.com/blog) › Paying to be seen › Reddit’s Q3 2026 results: what the numbers mean for marketers Earnings reports are written for investors. Lots of Adjusted EBITDA (Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation. A profit number companies like because it leaves out some costs.), share buybacks and guidance ranges. You don’t need most of it. But Reddit’s third quarter of 2026, reported on 29 October, has a few numbers that matter a lot if you advertise there, or if you’ve been counting on Reddit threads to show up in Google and AI answers. Here are the ones that matter, in plain words. ## In normal-people words ## The short version - **Reddit is making a lot more money from ads.** Ad revenue grew 54% to $847 million. - **It’s doing that with slightly fewer US users.** US daily users fell 2%. Growth came from outside the US. - **Google is sending Reddit less traffic.** Reddit’s CEO said search referrals were down meaningfully in Q3, and in October they dropped by more than 1 million referrals a week on average. - **Reddit is going logged-in only.** It starts testing this in a few markets outside the US in Q4. So: advertisers are paying more per person, and Reddit is betting on people who come to it directly, not through Google. ## The numbers that matter All figures are for the three months to 30 September 2026, compared with the same quarter in 2025. **Reddit Q3 2026, the marketer’s cut** | Number | Q3 2026 | Q3 2025 | Change | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Total revenue | $895M | $585M | +53% | | Ad revenue | $847M | $549M | +54% | | Other revenue (incl. data licensing) | $48M | $36M | +35% | | US revenue | $719M | $480M | +50% | | International revenue | $176M | $105M | +67% | | Daily active uniques (global) | 130.3M | 116.0M | +12% | | Daily active uniques (US) | 50.7M | 51.6M | −2% | | Daily active uniques (international) | 79.6M | 64.4M | +24% | | Logged-in daily uniques (global) | 53.5M | 50.2M | +7% | | Logged-out daily uniques (global) | 76.8M | 65.8M | +17% | | Logged-out daily uniques (US) | 27.3M | 28.5M | −4% | | Weekly active uniques (global) | 515.2M | 443.8M | +16% | | Revenue per daily user (global) | $6.87 | $5.04 | +36% | | Revenue per daily user (US) | $13.82 | $9.04 | +53% | | Revenue per daily user (international) | $2.43 | $1.84 | +32% | For Q4 2026, Reddit expects revenue of $1,000 million to $1,030 million. On the earnings call, Reddit put that at 38% to 42% growth. > **The DumbCMO:** Fewer US users, 53% more money from each one. That’s not a social network getting bigger. That’s an ad platform getting better at charging. ## Decoding the user numbers Reddit counts people as daily active uniques (Reddit’s word for daily users: a person it can identify, who visited the site or opened the app at least once in a day. Shortened to DAUq.). Two flavours matter: - **Logged-in:** people with an account, signed in. Reddit says they engage more and spend more time. - **Logged-out:** mostly people who land from a search engine, read a thread, and leave. Reddit’s quarterly filing says visitors from search engines are generally not logged in. Here’s the interesting bit. In its last annual report, Reddit said it would stop reporting logged-in and logged-out numbers from this quarter. It changed its mind. The filing says AI summaries and overviews in third-party search have made referral traffic more volatile, so the split is still useful. That tells you how much Google’s changes are hitting them. And it isn’t small. On the call, CEO Steve Huffman said that if October’s decline continues, total daily users “could fall in Q4 by a low double-digit percentage” from 130 million. ## Why Google is sending less, according to Reddit Huffman gave two guesses on the call: 1. **Google’s AI search, especially the rollout of AI Mode.** He said it pushes everyone down the search page, and that the AI experiences themselves “are not traffic drivers”. 2. **Machine-translated pages.** Reddit believes its auto-translated content is being ranked lower, which mainly hits traffic outside the US. He also said what *hasn’t* changed: “Reddit” is still among the most searched words on Google, and Google is crawling Reddit “as hard as ever.” Read that again as a marketer. Google still reads Reddit closely. It’s just sending fewer people there. ## The logged-in only move This is the biggest change for anyone who relies on Reddit threads being open to everyone. Huffman said Reddit will begin fully testing a logged-in only experience in select markets outside the US in Q4. His reasons: better personalisation, more signals for ad targeting, protecting Reddit’s data from scraping, and adapting to regulation. He said the vast majority of scraping happens among logged-out users. Two things he said that matter here: - **“This is a test, but we are going to make this transition.”** - There will be “some version of Reddit” accessible before the login prompt, for things like shared links and people coming from search. Where that line sits is what the test is meant to find out. Reddit also said logged-in and app users make up the vast majority of engagement and over 80% of its monetisation. ## The chai stall version The busiest chai stall in town used to let anyone stand around and listen to the regulars argue about cricket. Passers-by learned a lot for free. Now the owner says: sit down, order a cup, and tell us your name. You can still peek in from the road. But the good seats are for people who stay. **The conversation is the same. The door got narrower.** If your plan was “people will overhear good things about my shop from the road”, you need a new plan. ## What this means for Reddit ads Reddit’s ad business is clearly growing up. From the call, according to COO Jen Wong: - **Pricing grew faster than impressions.** Advertisers are paying more per ad shown. - **Click volume grew over 50%** and **conversion volume more than tripled** year over year. - **Shopping and app install campaigns both grew over 95%.** Shopping was the fastest-growing lower-funnel objective, and now supports up to 20 million products. - **Video views revenue more than doubled.** A new 15-second engaged video view objective entered public beta in Q3. - **Reddit Max**, its automated campaign type, entered public beta in Q3. Adoption more than tripled from Q2. It added asset groups (A way to group several product lines or creative themes inside one automated Max campaign.). - **Mid-market active advertisers grew more than 50%**, across North America and Europe. - **B2B targeting:** Reddit says more than 20 million business decision-makers use it, and B2B advertisers using its in-market audiences saw about a 7% average improvement in cost per action compared with other targeting options. - **Integrations:** a beta with HubSpot, new partners Innovid and Skai, Smartly’s Max API integration, and a Shopify integration that went generally available in May. **Should you try Reddit ads now?** - **If** You sell something people research before buying (software, gear, finance, travel, beauty) **→ then** Worth a test. Reddit named business and finance, pharma and travel as strong verticals, and its audiences come to compare and ask. - **If** You sell to businesses **→ then** Look at the B2B in-market audiences and lead-gen options. Start small and compare cost per lead with LinkedIn or Google. - **If** You run an online shop on Shopify **→ then** The Shopify integration plus product ads is the easiest way in. Watch return on ad spend, not clicks. - **If** You want to turn on Reddit Max and walk away **→ then** It’s still a beta. Automation that grew 3x in a quarter is a reason to test it, not to trust it blind. - **If** Your budget is tiny and your product is a hard sell **→ then** Rising prices per ad cut against you. Fix your offer and landing page first. Before you spend anything, know what a customer is worth to you. [CAC and LTV, explained](/blog/cac-and-ltv-explained) walks through it. ## What this means for SEO and AI answers For a few years the playbook was: Reddit threads rank on Google, AI tools quote Reddit, so get your brand talked about on Reddit. Three numbers complicate that. 1. **Google sends Reddit less traffic.** Fewer people land on threads from search, especially in the US. 2. **Logged-in only is coming.** If threads get harder to read without an account, some of that free “overhearing” goes away. 3. **Reddit is guarding its data.** Other revenue, which Reddit’s filing says includes content licensing, grew 35% to $48 million. On the call, Huffman said there were no updates on licensing deals, that talks were ongoing, and that any deal has to be “a fair exchange of value”. But Reddit still matters, for a simple reason: real people asking real questions. Reddit said half of US shoppers use it to verify AI recommendations. And Reddit added another 1 billion posts and comments this quarter, taking it to 27 billion. Also worth noting: talking about advertisers and AI answers on the call, Wong said Reddit is “pretty skeptical of GEO” and that Reddit is “pretty inoculated” to manipulation. In plain words: the company itself is telling you not to try to game it. > **The DumbCMO:** When the platform says “we’re skeptical of people gaming us for AI answers”, the guy selling “Reddit GEO packages” should hear footsteps. More on how AI answers pick sources: [Does SEO still matter now that Google answers with AI?](/blog/seo-in-the-age-of-ai-answers) ## Do this today - [ ] Search your brand name plus “reddit” on Google. Note which threads still show up and whether you can read them without logging in. - [ ] Find the two or three subreddits where your customers ask questions. Read them for a week before you post anything. - [ ] If you answer as your brand, say who you are, help first, and follow each subreddit’s rules. No fake accounts, no planted reviews. - [ ] Check how much of your site’s traffic has ever come from Reddit links. If it matters, plan for it to shrink. - [ ] If you sell to researchers, comparers or businesses, set a small test budget for Reddit ads with one clear goal: leads, sales or installs. - [ ] Work out your target cost per customer before the test, so you know when to stop. ## Not-so-frequently asked questions ### Is Reddit shrinking? Globally, no: daily users grew 12% to 130.3 million. In the US, daily users fell 2%, and Reddit warned total daily users could fall by a low double-digit percentage in Q4 if the October trend continues. ### Why does revenue grow while US users fall? Reddit is earning more per person. US revenue per daily user rose 53% to $13.82. Reddit says pricing grew faster than impressions. ### Will Reddit threads disappear from Google? Nobody knows yet. Reddit says Google still crawls it heavily, and that some version of Reddit will stay open for shared links and search visitors. The logged-in test starts outside the US in Q4. ### Does advertising on Reddit help me show up in ChatGPT or Google’s AI? Reddit didn’t promise that. Its COO said Reddit is “pretty skeptical of GEO”. Advertise for customers, not for robots. ### What is Reddit Max? Reddit’s automated campaign type. It entered public beta in Q3 2026, and Reddit has built it into onboarding for new advertisers. Treat it like any automated campaign: test it against what you already run. ### Is Reddit selling its data to AI companies? Reddit earns content licensing revenue, counted in its Other revenue line. On the call, it said it had no new deals to announce and talks were continuing. ## Things your agency won’t say - “We’ll get you mentioned on Reddit so ChatGPT recommends you” usually means fake accounts. Reddit says it’s built to resist that, and moderators ban it fast. - Reddit ads getting pricier per impression is great for Reddit’s shareholders. Make sure it’s also great for your cost per sale. - A strategy that depends on Google sending free traffic to someone else’s website was always a d#mn fragile one. Now the website owner is saying so out loud. ## Jargon Jail **Locked up: “ARPU”** Average revenue per user. Reddit calls it average revenue per unique: **quarterly revenue in a region divided by its average daily users there.** Rising ARPU with flat users means each person is being shown ads that cost advertisers more. Good for Reddit. Worth watching if you’re the one paying. ## Where to go next - How AI answers choose what to quote: [Does SEO still matter now that Google answers with AI?](/blog/seo-in-the-age-of-ai-answers) - Why everyone’s Google traffic is moving: [Google’s AI summary now shows on over 80% of searches](/blog/ai-overviews-on-80-percent-of-searches) - New to ads? Start with [What are paid ads?](/blog/what-are-paid-ads) - Before you pay anyone to “get you into AI answers”: [Scam watch](/scam-watch#guaranteed-ai-answers) ## Sources 1. Reddit Investor Relations, [“Reddit Reports Third Quarter 2026 Results”](https://investor.redditinc.com/news-events/news-releases/news-details/2026/Reddit-Reports-Third-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx), 29 October 2026. Revenue, users, ARPU and Q4 guidance. 2. Reddit, Inc., [Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000171344526000116/rddt-20260930.htm), SEC filing. Ad and other revenue split, content licensing, logged-out users and why Reddit kept reporting them. 3. The Motley Fool, [“Reddit (RDDT) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript”](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/30/reddit-rddt-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/), 30 October 2026. Search referrals, logged-in only test, ad product details and quotes. ## Related notes - [The Black Friday ads survival guide: spend smarter when everyone’s bidding](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/black-friday-ads-survival-guide): Ads get pricier around Black Friday (27 November 2026) because every shop bids at once. Start in early November, build remarketing lists, get ads approved early, raise budgets gradually, don’t rebuild campaigns mid-sale, and check whether ads found new buyers or just charged you for old ones. - [Meta’s brand formats: Super Burst, First Impression, Reels Trending](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/meta-ads-october-2026-updates): Meta’s Brand Summit (15 Oct) pushed Ads Super Burst, First Impression Ads (US test), and broader Reels Trending Ads. Today (28 Oct) product browsing turns on in existing ads unless you opted out. Here’s the plain-words tour with a doodle for each format. - [ChatGPT ads: how they pick who shows, in plain English](https://dumbcmo.com/blog/chatgpt-ads-how-they-work): ChatGPT ads are chosen by matching your ad to the conversation, then auctioned. 100,000+ advertisers are already in. For most small businesses, watch for now, and don’t move your budget yet. --- From [DumbCMO](https://dumbcmo.com): The marketing notes you were too embarrassed to take.