Why Reddit Ads Work

Steve Huffman, Co-Founder and CEO of Reddit, joins Sourcery at Reddit's San Francisco HQ for a deep dive into how Reddit became one of the strongest businesses in social media — and why it may be even more important in the AI era.

On its 2-year anniversary as a public company (NYSE: $RDDT), we cover Reddit’s 2024 debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), including how the company brought its community along for the ride through one of the largest directed share programs in tech IPO history—allowing Reddit users to buy shares at the IPO price.

From $12M in revenue in 2015 to $2.2B in 2025, Reddit has quietly built one of the most durable social platforms on the internet. A core idea from this conversation: Reddit is built on real humans — and as Steve puts it, there needs to be an “ass in seat.”

As AI agents, bots, and synthetic content flood the internet, Reddit is doubling down on authenticity, human conversation, and community-driven moderation — while also becoming one of the most valuable data sources powering top AI models.

We cover:

• Reddit’s NYSE IPO and why Steve recommends going public

• Why Reddit’s ad business is working while others struggle

• How Reddit became critical training data for companies like OpenAI and Google

• The “ass in seat” philosophy and why human presence matters

• How Reddit handles bots, agents, and AI-generated content

• Why Reddit may have cracked the social media business model

• Steve’s contrarian take on IPOs and building long-term companies

Reddit by the numbers:

• 121M Daily Active Uniques

• 471M+ Weekly Active Uniques

• 100K+ Active Communities

• 24B+ Posts & Comments

• $2.2B Annual Revenue (2025)

If you want to understand where the internet is heading — and why human communities may matter more than ever — subscribe to Sourcery.

Steve Huffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuffman56/  

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

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