Reddit wants to help brands predict consumer behavior

The Future. Reddit is pitching a new predictive service to brands — bespoke marketing reports based on site activity and user predictions about various trends and technologies. With the service, brands could seamlessly incorporate that data into their marketing strategies. If it proves popular, the initiative could seriously grow Reddit’s revenue streams.

Nuts and bolts
Reddit wants to help brands predict consumer trends — and it announced its new initiative with the release of a special marketing report yesterday.

• First, Reddit scoured subreddits and identified trends within them — and the report was for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which meant subreddits in science and tech, like r/futurology or r/nootropics.
• Reddit then surveyed its communities to find out when its members expected various trends and technologies to go mainstream.
• The results: 2025 would bring insect-based food, AI-generated music, and the metaverse into mainstream culture, with robot chefs showing up in 2035 and space tourism going big by 2050.
• Reddit took this information and incorporated it into various bespoke reports written up for different brands. For example, data about eating insects would be sent to food brands, while data on designer drugs would go to pharmaceutical companies.

r/ambition
Reddit’s generally ramping up its involvement in publicity events. Going to shows like CES allows the message board company to rub elbows with big hitters like PepsiCo, BMW, L’Oréal, and Lowe’s… and potentially make customers out of them.

Reddit’s ad revenue has steadily grown in the past few years, but its profits are still far smaller than those of its competitors relative to Reddit’s prevalence in internet culture. The success or failure of this initiative would shed light on whether Reddit can capitalize on their data like TikTok and Meta can– and whether or not users will hate them for it.