Hi and welcome back to another edition of The Keyword.

This week, we look at Reddit’s push to reposition itself as a performance channel while becoming part of the infrastructure behind AI recommendations. With SMB ad spend doubling and search ambitions expanding, it may be worth taking a fresh look.

— Kole

Coming up:

Advertisers spent $690 million on Reddit ads in Q4 2025. That’s a 75% year-over-year increase.

The company also said ad spend from small and medium-sized businesses doubled.

Reddit has been seen mostly as an upper-funnel channel useful for cultural relevance, less so for direct response. That perception appears to be changing.

Reddit’s role extends beyond advertising. It is also becoming part of the infrastructure behind AI-generated answers.

According to data from Profound, Reddit is the most cited social media platform in ChatGPT responses, accounting for 3.36% of citations. The next closest platform, LinkedIn, accounts for 0.32%.

Reddit is also leaning further into search.

Weekly active users of Reddit’s search tools grew 30% year-over-year to 80 million. 

CEO Steve Huffman has described search advertising as “an enormous market and opportunity.” While no timeline has been announced, the company is planning a dedicated search ad product.

As Reddit refines its lower-funnel capabilities, solidifies its role in AI ecosystems, and eyes search as the next frontier, it's quietly building a more complete advertising and discovery engine.

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More users have reported that they have the offer to pay to remove ads on Facebook and Instagram, with prices starting at £2.99 per month on the web and £3.99 on mobile. Subscribers’ data will be excluded from personalized ads.

The Publisher Content Marketplace lets publishers control how their articles are used in AI-powered tools and receive compensation. It tracks when content contributes to AI responses and shares this data with publishers.

The app has grown from 40,000 to over 1 million users in just a few weeks, with more than 500,000 new users joining in 72 hours.

The jump in TikTok uninstalls followed the announcement that U.S. operations would move under a majority-American-owned entity according to Sensor Tower data shared with CNBC.

The early beta will include a small group of brands, with some starting campaigns as soon as February 6. AdWeek reported that, while the minimum commitment is $200,000, some brands in retail and streaming were asked to commit around $250,000, and others were offered budgets between $100,000 and $125,000.

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