Reddit (RDDT) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Date

Thursday, October 30, 2025 at 5 p.m. ET

Call participants

Chief Executive Officer — Steven Huffman

Chief Operating Officer — Jennifer Wong

Chief Financial Officer — Andrew Vollero

Chief Communications Officer — Jesse Rose

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Takeaways

Daily Active Unique Users (DAUQ) -- 116 million DAUQ, supported by both organic product improvements and marketing.

Total Revenue -- $585 million total revenue, up 68% year over year, with strength from both advertising and international channels.

Advertising Revenue -- $549 million, growing 74% year over year, driven by broad-based demand across large, mid-market, and SMB advertisers.

Net Income -- $163 million net income, with a net income margin of 28%, improving by $133 million over the previous year.

Adjusted EBITDA -- Adjusted EBITDA reached $236 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%, surpassing the IPO target for the first time.

Gross Margin -- 91%, up 90 basis points year over year and exceeding 90% for five consecutive quarters.

Incremental Adjusted EBITDA Margin -- with an incremental adjusted EBITDA margin of 60%, marking a new high for Reddit (NYSE:RDDT).

Free Cash Flow -- with free cash flow of $183 million, with a free cash flow margin of 31%, and more than $500 million generated in the last twelve months.

Cash and Equivalents -- with cash and equivalents of $2.2 billion at quarter end.

Fully Diluted Shares Outstanding -- 206.1 million fully diluted shares outstanding, with stock-based compensation expense declining from 19% to 16% of revenue.

Active Advertiser Count -- Expanded over 75% year over year across all segments.

ARPU -- $5.40, up 41% year over year, with impressions as the primary growth driver.

International Revenue Growth -- International revenue grew 74% year over year, outpacing the 67% increase in the U.S, supported by machine translation in 30 languages.

Publisher Tools and Reddit Pro -- New Reddit Pro tools for publishers launched, with the Associated Press leveraging AI to sync content and track engagement; these tools are viewed as accretive to both engagement and potential advertising leads.

Q4 2025 Revenue and EBITDA Guidance -- Management guided to $655 million-$665 million in revenue (53%-55% year-over-year growth) and $275 million-$285 million adjusted EBITDA (78%-85% year-over-year growth), with a midpoint margin of 42%.

CapEx -- $2 million, less than 0.5% of revenue, maintaining high operating and free cash flow alignment.

Redesigned User Experience -- Rollout underway for a more modern, search-forward interface and simplified onboarding, targeting increased user retention and engagement.

AI and Automation in Ad Products -- Machine learning-driven optimizations improved lower-funnel ad performance by more than 20%, and automation saw over 50% year-over-year adoption growth in mid/lower-funnel ad products.

Moderator Tool Adoption -- Over 3,000 communities are now live with new moderation tools, yielding a 30% increase in active moderators per community on average.

App- and Shopping-Focused Monetization -- Dynamic product ads (DPAs) and partnerships such as with Smartly cited as delivering outsized, ongoing performance, especially in shopping and app-install solutions.

Summary

Management emphasized that organic product innovation and targeted marketing were the primary drivers of both user and revenue growth, contrasting with limited impact from external search channels. Strategic priorities include scaling global traffic through localization, optimizing for higher app usage, and deploying modern AI-driven moderation and ad products to deepen engagement and monetization. Quarter-end liquidity improvements were achieved while reducing stock-based compensation and fully diluted share count.

Steven Huffman stated, "we exited Q3 higher than our average, so we have a head start." for quarterly user growth going into Q4.

Jennifer Wong said, "currently account for a small portion of our total lower funnel revenue," with broad adoption targeted as a key future opportunity.

Andrew Vollero said, "Our net income margin was 28%," and incremental adjusted EBITDA margin reached 60%.

Management reaffirmed that chatbots and AI partner referral traffic remain immaterial to current user acquisition, but expressed optimism for ongoing collaboration.

Self-serve advertising is not a major contributor to advertiser growth at present, with current expansion focused on managed and hybrid service models.

International user and revenue expansion was attributed to local content frameworks, marketing, and machine translation, with specific momentum in France, Brazil, and India.

Executives outlined plans for further automation in the ad stack and campaign setup, citing positive early returns on advertiser efficiencies.

ARPU improvement was driven primarily by increases in impressions, while ad load increases were implemented temporarily and then reversed.

Adjusted operating expenses, mostly in sales and marketing, grew 35%, close to half the pace of revenue growth (68%), reflecting investment discipline.

Management disclosed that gross margin has remained above 90% for five consecutive quarters, underscoring a scalable cost structure.

Industry glossary

DAUQ: Daily Active Unique Users — an internal Reddit metric tracking distinct user logins per day by quarter.

DPA: Dynamic Product Ads — automated ad units that leverage machine learning to serve shopping-related promotions based on user intent.

CAPI: Conversion API — a tool that securely transmits conversion data from advertisers to Reddit for measurement and campaign optimization.

SAN: Self-Attributing Network — an ad platform status where conversions and attribution are directly reported to advertisers’ measurement partners.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Steven Huffman: Thanks, Jesse. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call. Q3 was a strong quarter for Reddit, Inc. with differentiated results and solid execution across product growth and revenue. We ended the quarter with $116 million DAUQ and $444 million, both growing around 20% year over year. We're especially encouraged by the mix of growth, with organic product-led improvements and successful marketing both playing a role. This balance is working, and we're focused on replicating it across markets. Revenue came in at $585 million, up 68% year over year, and our financial model is scaling very well.

We continue to be GAAP profitable with a net income of $163 million and a net margin of 28%, an improvement of $133 million from last year. This quarter we achieved a targeted adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%, which was a profitability goal we set at our IPO just last year. Today, Reddit, Inc. is the number three most visited site in the U.S., according to Semrush October 2025. That puts us in rare company. YouTube is number two and Amazon is number four, and reflects how Reddit, Inc. is where people start, not just where they end up.

People come here to find trusted perspectives, to participate in communities that share their interests, no matter how niche or mainstream, and increasingly to engage directly with brands, institutions, and publishers. In September, we launched new Reddit Pro tools tailored for publishers. Early adopters, like the Associated Press, now sync their feeds, automatically import articles, track how their stories are shared, and use AI-powered tools to find the right communities. Our consumer product strategy continues to focus on making Reddit, Inc. easier to use and more rewarding from day one, so casual users become daily users. They're already coming to Reddit, Inc., now it's on us to make the experience worth coming back for by being more relevant and intuitive.

To that end, we're making real progress across the three main focus areas we shared last quarter: core product, search, and internationalization. Let's start with the core product. We're redesigning the Reddit, Inc. experience with a more modern, search-forward interface, streamlining onboarding so it's easier for new users to find what they're looking for with a dynamic, personalized home feed. We're also helping more people contribute to their favorite communities by using AI to interpret subreddit rules and surface post insights. On the moderation side, we're investing in tools that help mods grow and strengthen their communities. These tools are now live in over 3,000 communities, which are seeing 30% more active moderators on average.

Moderators aren't just enforcing rules; they're shaping culture, building communities, and helping Reddit, Inc. thrive. Our job is to give them the tools to do it more efficiently.

Next, search. Search is one of our biggest opportunities because Reddit, Inc. conversations are uniquely authentic, contextual, and helpful. This is why we're investing in making Reddit, Inc. a true search destination. In Q3, over 75 million people searched on Reddit, Inc. weekly, and that number continues to rise. Reddit Answers provides users with curated, community-powered insights that are often more helpful than traditional web results. We started integrating Reddit Answers into core search, increasing its visibility across conversations and rolling out to non-English languages. Our aim is to have a single, great search experience on Reddit, Inc. And third, internationalization. Our international growth continues to accelerate. Machine translation is available in 30 languages, and it's a major driver of top-of-funnel growth outside the U.S. We've built a local content framework to identify top interests in each country, which we use to guide partnerships, content, and marketing. This approach worked well in India, and now we're applying it in Australia, Brazil, Germany, and France. We're focused on finishing the year strong and putting our strategy for 2026 in motion. Looking ahead, our biggest priorities are: growing app users by improving the experience and therefore retention, broadening the types of users and communities that call Reddit, Inc. home, both in the U.S. and globally, increasing top-of-funnel growth by diversifying the sources of traffic including organic, paid, and publisher-driven, and, of course, scaling monetization and ad formats for our users and partners. Reddit, Inc. is in a unique position. We're not trying to be the next anything. We're focused on being the best version of ourselves, what the Internet needs most. A place where people can connect on almost any topic and find genuinely useful information. Because no matter what you're going through, someone on Reddit, Inc. has already been there, done that, and shared the story.

Thank you for being a part of this journey. I'll now hand it over to Jennifer Wong to walk through the business in more detail.

Jennifer Wong: Thanks, Steve. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by building on what Steve mentioned about our consumer product strategy. We're excited about the opportunity to meaningfully grow our user base both in the U.S. and internationally. And as we refine our strategies, our consumer product roadmap is focusing more intently on the Reddit, Inc. app. This is where we can build direct, high-engagement relationships, which are most valuable to both our users and our business. The app can be more personalized, have easier onboarding, and incorporate search more consistently. These kinds of changes can impact user retention, increase returns on marketing, and help us better convert web users into the app.

We're also working on expanding our users, communities, and contribution across Reddit, Inc. We recently introduced tools focused specifically on publishers to help them share content and engage organically on Reddit, Inc. through Reddit Pro. Now moving to monetization. In the third quarter, we demonstrated continued growth and strong execution with total revenue reaching $585 million, up 68% year over year. Our unique proposition and ad platform improvements delivered differentiated growth and positive outcomes for advertisers. The advertising business grew 74% year over year in Q3, reaching $549 million. And the growth was driven by broad-based strength across the business, as we continue to expand existing relationships, acquire new customers, and diversify our advertiser base.

The total active advertiser count expanded by over 75% year over year in Q3 as we added new accounts across all channels, including large, mid-market, and SMB businesses. Now moving to our ad stack. Our strategy is focused on making all businesses successful on Reddit, Inc. by driving performance of our ad solutions, improving usability for users and productivity for our sales force, and offering our advertisers and partners Reddit, Inc.'s unique solutions and ad formats. We made meaningful progress against each of these areas in Q3. First, ongoing investments in our ad models and formats are driving greater performance and efficiency, which means better returns for advertisers.

In Q3, we continued to optimize our models for lower funnel objectives, including app installs and conversions. Model improvements to our lower funnel app ads objective generated double-digit percentage improvements to performance outcomes. And ML-driven optimizations in the lower funnel conversion objective improved performance by over 20%. We continue to enhance our shopping solution, dynamic product ads, or DPA, which launched to general availability earlier this year. We're excited by the capability and seeing ongoing improvements in performance beyond the core conversion objective. DPAs currently account for a small portion of our total lower funnel revenue. Broader advertiser adoption remains an opportunity, as it takes a little more time and resources for clients to implement this more complex ad product.

To strengthen our lower funnel strategy, we continue to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to adopt our measurement tools, including Pixel and conversion API, or CAPI. In Q3, CAPI-covered conversion revenue tripled year over year. Second, improving usability for advertisers and productivity for our sales force. We're investing in automation across our full ad stack to help drive adoption of our ad tools and improve performance for advertisers. For the upper funnel, we launched a beta of auto-bidding, which simplifies budget management and improves efficiency, leading to over 15% more impressions and lower pricing for advertisers. In the middle and lower funnel, auto-targeting is delivering strong results, and adoption is growing over 50% year over year.

We're also in early testing of our end-to-end automated campaign platform, which uses AI to streamline campaign setup. It is focused on activating mid and lower funnel objectives and provides customers with insights on what made their campaign successful. Early results are promising, with advertisers unlocking higher return on ad spend while spending less time managing campaigns. We're continuing to test the solution with a number of global advertisers across business sizes and verticals and adding new features. Third, building Reddit, Inc.'s unique solutions and ad formats for our advertisers. In the third quarter, we expanded access to conversation summary add-ons, a distinctive ad format that lets brands integrate positive Reddit, Inc. conversations into ads.

We're now testing this format with a broader set of advertisers across the funnel, and seeing encouraging results with brands like Bethesda, the mid-market video game publisher, seeing 15% higher click-through rates. We're developing interactive ads, built on our developer platform, allowing advertisers to create custom experiences like mini-games or quizzes directly within an ad. This format is testing now, with plans to scale more broadly next year. Finally, we're seeing momentum with our free format, launched last year, which lets brands tell richer stories through multiple media types in a post that feels native to Reddit, Inc.

For example, FootJoy used free form ads to promote their new HyperFlex line of golf shoes, delivering click-through rates 100% above benchmark and time spent more than 50% above benchmark. Overall, Q3 was another strong quarter for Reddit, Inc. I'm proud of the progress and the improvements delivering for our communities and partners and excited about the opportunities ahead. Now I'll turn the call over to Andrew Vollero.

Andrew Vollero: Thank you, Jen, and good afternoon, everyone. Our solid Q3 results again demonstrated the financial model continues to scale well. And specifically, Reddit, Inc. could be a leader in both growth and profitability. Total revenues grew 68% year over year, and our adjusted EBITDA margin reached 40%, passing that important profitability benchmark for the first time. The key to our financial success is continued traction across our five financial strategies. These strategies include first, achieving differentiated revenue growth. Revenues grew more than 60% for the fifth consecutive quarter. Second, expanding margins. Gross margins expanded 90 basis points year over year to 91%, our fifth consecutive quarter of over 90%.

Our adjusted EBITDA and net income margins expanded by 1,300 and 1,900 basis points year over year, respectively. Third, scaling profitably. GAAP net income reached $163 million, and adjusted EBITDA hit $236 million, both new highs for Reddit, Inc. Our net income margin was 28%. Our incremental adjusted EBITDA margin hit 60%. Fourth, generating positive cash flow. Q3 cash flow ended at $183 million, and our free cash flow margin for the quarter was 31%. In the last twelve months, we've generated over $500 million of free cash flow. And cash equivalents in the balance sheet continue to build at $2.2 billion. And fifth, minimizing dilution.

We continue to view stock-based compensation and dilution as business costs and manage them closely. The progress continues to be evident. Total fully diluted shares outstanding were 206.1 million, down from both 206.6 million last quarter and 206.2 million last year. Similarly, stock-based compensation costs fell sequentially both in dollars and a percent of revenue basis from 19% to 16%. I'll provide a bit more color on these headlines. First, Q3 total revenue of $585 million was driven by our advertising revenue, which grew 74% year over year to $549 million, as we saw strength across objectives, verticals, geographies, and channels. Other revenue, which includes revenue from our data licensing business, reached $36 million, up 7% year over year.

Average revenue per user, ARPU, grew 41% year over year to $5.4, which is still low on an absolute basis and remains an opportunity. Regionally, revenue grew 67% and 74% year over year in the U.S. and internationally, respectively. In the quarter, four revenue drivers fueled growth. First, performance ads and brand ads had strong quarters, both growing more than 70% year over year. Second, impression growth remains our key driver, but we saw a tailwind from pricing in the quarter, a consistent trend so far this year as we continue to deliver value and favorable outcomes for advertisers.

Third, we saw strength across the funnel with growth ranging from mid to high double digits in the upper, middle, and lower funnel segments. And fourth, we continue to see diversified strengths by verticals. We had nine of our top 15 verticals grow revenues by 50% or more. Now moving to expenses. The growth rate in Q3 total adjusted cost was very similar to Q2. Total adjusted costs, which include both cost of revenue and OpEx, were $349 million in Q3, up 37% year over year, consistent with a 38% growth last quarter. Our main cost driver continues to be operating expenses, which on an adjusted basis were $297 million in Q3, about 85% of total adjusted expenses.

Adjusted OpEx costs grew 35% in Q3, the same growth rate as Q2, close to half the growth rate of our revenue, which was 68%. Most of the increase in OpEx costs were driven by our growth investments in sales and marketing. Adjusted sales and marketing expenses were $115 million in Q3, about 20% of revenue, in line with peers. Sales and marketing investments were made in two key areas: first, building out our sales team, and second, branded user marketing. Let me expand on each. First, our sales team investments are primarily adding people resources in customer-facing areas like sales, marketing, and ad tech.

In the quarter, the company grew total headcount about 3% sequentially, slightly more than 80 net adds, with about 70% of the net hires focused in these three growth functions. Our investment track record continues to be very strong here, with fast paybacks and investment returns at multiples higher than the cost. Second, during the quarter, we continued to invest strategically in brand campaigns and user marketing to drive awareness, acquisition, and engagement. Our marketing spend was aligned with creative campaigns and targeted specific growth segments. We maintained a balanced approach to investing in brand awareness and performance marketing in both the U.S. and international markets.

We remain thoughtful with our Q3 spending, targeting marketing expenses in the low to mid-single digits as a percentage of revenue. We're poised to scale marketing spends where we see the traction is promising. We'll continue to invest in those areas if we see the returns are sustainable. Let me finish up the results discussion by adding a couple of callouts for the quarter. In Q3, our CapEx remained modest at $2 million, less than 0.5% of revenue, which means both operating and free cash flow continue to move in lockstep. Net income was $163 million, or $0.87 per basic share, $0.80 per diluted share, up four to five times from $0.18 and $0.16 last year, respectively.

So as we look ahead, we'll share our internal thoughts on revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter, which is where we have the greatest visibility. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we estimate revenue in the range of $655 million to $665 million, representing 53% to 55% year-over-year revenue growth, with a midpoint of about 54%. Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $275 million to $285 million, representing approximately 78% to 85% year-over-year growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 42% at the midpoint. So overall, we accomplished a lot in Q3, and the output metrics of users, revenues, and margins reflect that progress.

The business model remains quite powerful, as we saw impressive revenue growth be converted into 90% gross margins, 60% incremental margins, and now 40% adjusted EBITDA margins for the first time. That was a pre-IPO goal for Reddit, Inc. and an important milestone to pass. That concludes my comments for Q3. Now we turn our attention to the seasonally important fourth quarter. Let me turn the call back over to Steven Huffman.

Steven Huffman: Thanks, Drew. We'll start as usual with a few from the Reddit, Inc. community, and then we'll turn it over to the rest of the call. Question one, I am impressed by the growth in international DAUQ, 31% year over year. Can you give any detail on which countries in particular stood out for growth? Thanks for the question. We're seeing strength across a number of regions and our focus countries, in particular France, Brazil, and India.

And these are some of the first countries where we launched our international playbook, which includes machine translation, which is a good driver of top-of-funnel growth, a local content framework based on interests and passions, marketing efforts to drive awareness, and then finally, local partnerships with brands and notable people. Question two. A question about what we are doing to improve the user experience, making it easier to contribute, and helping new users understand subreddit rules. So improving the onboarding experience and delivering value early in a user's journey is a top priority for us. We want them to see in their first session that Reddit, Inc. is amazing and has content for them.

So our goal is to connect users with relevant content very quickly. Community rules are a unique Reddit, Inc. feature. Every subreddit has rules that are written by its own community and enforced by their own community. But what we're doing is we're using AI to make it easier for those user-written rules or moderator-written rules to be enforced automatically to make moderation more fun and efficient. And so that's coming along. That's out there and working nicely in many cases. And we're supporting the contribution journey so users post successfully. Using AI-powered tools, post guidance, and community recommendations, to, for example, tell a user before they submit a post whether or not it violates the community rules.

This has historically been a friction point for new users. Okay. Now we'll turn it over to the rest of the call for questions.

Operator: Our first question comes from Ronald Josey from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Ronald Josey: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Steve, I wanted to ask about users and then also on product. And so can you talk to us a little bit more just about user growth trends here, particularly as we go into 4Q and going forward in the context, I think you said on the call, we're increasing top-of-funnel growth by diversifying traffic. So any insights on, call it, immediate term or near-term trends on traffic and more details on diversifying traffic progress? And then on Answers, now that we're embedded in search results, reaching 75 million WOWs, would love to hear engagement trends from those users.

Are those users who are using Answers more engaged, asking more questions, things along those lines? Thank you.

Steven Huffman: Thanks, Ron. Okay. Question one, user growth trends. So we mentioned in Q3, it was a nice balance between organic and paid. External search was basically flat. Of course, that can ebb and flow. The product initiatives, including machine translation, were the largest contributors. And our product roadmap, we're still working very hard through that. Marketing today is very broad, but we want to focus on growing our most valuable users in the app, improving ROI there. Looking into Q4, we exited Q3 higher than our average, so we have a head start. Beyond that, we're going to see how the quarter plays out. And thinking bigger and longer term, we're really focused on the product to drive sustainable growth.

We have 190 million Americans visit Reddit, Inc. every week. So the reach is there. Our aim is to increase the frequency of those visits. And that really means focusing on that first session user experience to improve retention, which compounds into growth. As for Answers, that integration is coming along nicely. Our goal there is to build a global, unified, and modern search experience. The community vote signals that we see on Reddit, Inc., the authenticity and trust are all differentiators in Reddit, Inc. search. We're currently handling about 20% of our search volume in answers or in that kind of core search box, and that full integration is coming in the coming quarters.

We've also expanded Reddit Answers to non-English languages, very recently, last week, Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese. So I think lots of opportunity there. And then very high level, search is something that many users do in their first session. So this is a part of kind of the general onboarding and retention strategy. Which is to make sure that when new users run a search on Reddit, Inc., it's great results and it's differentiated. That should turn into improved retention for us, which is why it's such a priority. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Thomas Champion from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thomas Champion: Good afternoon, everyone. Jen, I was wondering if you could talk about Publisher Pro. Is there a revenue opportunity here? Or is this about bringing new content into the corpus and maybe driving user engagement on Reddit, Inc.? And Drew, maybe for you, curious if you could talk about user marketing, how you're approaching it domestically and in the rest of the world? And just curious if you intend to ramp user marketing spend going forward. Thank you.

Jennifer Wong: Thanks, Tom. I'll take the first one. So I think we think about Reddit Pro, first and foremost, as bringing value to the platform. So, you know, Reddit, Inc. is better when we have a diverse set of users and entities, and leagues and businesses and publishers add a lot of vibrancy to our community because they bring content, and a lot of our communities are talking about these organizations. And so having them engage on our platform, we think, is really positive, and Reddit Pro is a way of giving them a home on Reddit, Inc. from which to do that. And, of course, obviously, if we have more engagement on the platform, that converts into revenue.

Having Reddit Pro also allows businesses to find a home on Reddit, Inc. They can have their own profile. They have tools that allow them to find insights, who's talking about their brands, etcetera, their products. And so that is really helpful because those are potentially leads into our advertising platform. Publisher tools specifically, I think our vision there is to help those publishers be able to bring their content onto Reddit, Inc. That could be in multiple formats, in text, in video, etcetera. And I think we'll just increase the contribution, the content on Reddit, Inc., and the vibrancy of the platform. So I think it's accretive in a lot of ways.

Andrew Vollero: So on your second question on how we're thinking about the financials of it and where we're focused, look, right now, we're in test mode. I would say that we're looking across a couple of dimensions. I would say we're top of funnel, lower funnel in terms of our spend. Doing brand spend at the top. We're also looking for conversion down at the bottom. I'd say we're spending in the U.S. and international markets. Right now, I've given you a couple of breadcrumbs over the last couple of quarters. On how much we've spent. We spent about single-digit percent of revenue last quarter. This quarter, we're kind of low mid-single digits percent of revenue.

To be honest with you, Tom, we don't have sort of a pinpoint number that we're going after. We're really, at this point, looking at that quality user. We're looking at the ROI. We're looking at the retention curves of people that we're bringing onto the platform. That's really what we're focused on. If we find an area that makes sense, we're not afraid to spend. Obviously, we have a P&L that we're continuing to show that we can both grow our business and grow it profitably. And so we do have that ability to invest. I think really right now, we're trying to understand how we can really drive that usage on our platform.

If we find an area that makes sense, we're not afraid to invest behind it. But if we don't see that, we won't be putting a ton of money behind it. So that's where we are. We're really idea-driven at this point. Really looking for engagement users. Over the last couple of quarters, we've been kind of consistent in that spend. It could be more than that if we move forward, if we're starting to see the traction in certain markets or with certain initiatives.

Operator: Our next question comes from John Colantuoni from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

John Colantuoni: Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions. In your new marketing campaign, talk about returns and learnings so far. And maybe you could just sort of help compare how engagement for the users who come to you through performance ads compared to your existing users? And second, as you track engagement of these users acquired through performance channels, how does conversion to log in compare to overall company averages? Thanks.

Jennifer Wong: I can take that. Good questions. Let me start with some examples. So we've done a little bit of brand work. For example, we did a campaign in France, you know, in countries outside of the U.S., where our awareness and consideration is lower than in the U.S. because we're newer. We think we need to make some investment at the top of the funnel. Very beginning of that journey. But things we like from that were the fact that we saw an increase in Reddit, Inc. app installs as a result of a brand campaign, which I think is good.

And we saw movement in brand awareness and consideration, which I think was also positive and provides a foundation for performance later. Obviously, with things like that, you want to keep on being top of mind, etcetera, and that's work that you have to continue to do. But I think there are some good learnings there. I think over time, we can probably toggle how we think about brand and performance as the awareness sticks in some of those new markets outside of the U.S. So just to give you an example of the kinds of things that we're testing, on the performance side, I'd say, you know, it takes we've marketed.

So until, you know, recently, we really haven't spent a lot of money on marketing. And so there is some apparatus that you have to build in terms of the infrastructure for marketing and targeting, etcetera. And so, you know, spend that we've done since we turned it on has allowed us to learn there. There's still more to learn. I think what we're excited about is the opportunity to grow specific audiences. So if you look at Reddit, Inc., in the U.S., for example, we have very robust content in parenting, in sports, in gaming.

But yet, when you look at the audiences that are available in those areas, like how many parents there are in the U.S. that could come to Reddit, Inc. and have a great experience, about half of them don't even think about Reddit, Inc. for parenting. Only a quarter of them are on Reddit, Inc. today. It's a really big opportunity. That's both a little bit of awareness and a little bit of performance that needs to go into that. And there's a little bit of work that we're doing and thinking about the landing page experience for that.

Like, when we bring them in, and show off that we have great parenting content, we bring them in, like, what do we show them first? And maybe it's a variety of different content from different communities, you know, from dad ed and mom ed and parenting, etcetera. So that's what we're really testing to see where we have the best resonance for that audience. And as we go through the testing sort of with one audience group, we want to expand to others. We see a lot of verticals where we have this opportunity. So that's kind of how we're approaching it.

Operator: Our next question comes from Naved Khan from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Naved Khan: Great. Thank you very much. Questions from me. One, maybe just on the simplified onboarding flow. Are there any early results you can share in terms of how that effort is going? And then maybe just another one on referral traffic from AI chatbots. Just trying to understand how meaningful is that in terms of your overall traffic and what kind of trends you're seeing there? Anything you can do specifically to improve that? Or maybe it's not necessarily very, very important to you.

Steven Huffman: Great. Thanks for the questions. So on simplified onboarding, we're launching a kind of a revamp of that relatively soon. To get early results. I think intuitively it makes a lot of sense. Reddit, Inc., we believe, has some of the best content on the Internet. But today, it's behind a couple of screens of interrogation before you actually get to see it. And so really streamlining that or even removing it are the things that we're putting in the test shortly, and making sure users are landing on feeds that are relevant to them. Jen was alluding to some of that.

Where users are coming from specific channels with specific interests, making sure the content matches their expectations and what's going to work for them. So it's still very early there. We're excited about where that can go. Second question on traffic from chatbots. They're not a traffic driver today. I think our relationships, you know, with the companies that we work for or work with directly are healthy. And we've both learned a lot over the last couple of years. Really, the value of Reddit, Inc.'s data and where our respective products can go and how we can help each other. I'm looking forward to continuing to work on these things with these partners.

But they're not a major traffic driver today. But I think there's plenty of opportunity there as we continue to work together.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jason Helfstein: Hi, thanks for taking the question. I'll just start with LLM licensing. Is there any kind of color or just thoughts around progress with how licensing deals with both of your existing partners or non-partners? And then for those companies that you're kind of involved in lawsuits with, perhaps just share what is their logic. They think they can just take, you know, your IP without paying for it. And then just a quick follow-up, is there any kind of deals you could do to capture identity for logged-out users that would help with that targeting, whether it's like a JV or partners? Thanks.

Steven Huffman: Okay. Thanks for the questions. On LLM licensing, no news to share here. Our relationships are very healthy and collaborative, as I mentioned. I think we've both learned a lot. And I think we've better identified the areas where we can mutually help each other's products and create better consumer experiences. So I'm looking forward to continuing to work through that with our partners there. But I think we're in great shape. Second on the lawsuits, can't add anything on that. Our complaints are worth a read. There's, I think, lots of information in there. I think you captured their logic. But I don't want to suppose it.

But at the end of the day, look, our job is to protect our data. For our business, for our users, and for our paying partners. And finally, I think your third question was capturing identity of logged-out users. Look. All of Reddit, Inc. is really built around this idea of connecting users with their interests. So not necessarily what or who they are, but what they're into on Reddit, Inc. And so that's how we're different than some other platforms. We don't need to know who you are or necessarily even how old you are or other demographics. Because we look at your explicit interest on Reddit, Inc. Right? Are you part of the skiing community?

You're probably into outdoor stuff. Are you coming from a, you know, parenting blog? You're probably a parent. And so that's generally how we think about it. And it's a little bit of a different model. But I think it's better for user privacy and we can target on a, I think, a unique but really powerful dimension.

Operator: Next question comes from Andrew Boone from Citizens Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Andrew Boone: Thanks so much for taking the question. I wanted to go back to logged-out users and talk about users that are coming in from search. Can you guys talk about the product roadmap of improving that experience? And then one for Jen. Jen, can you just talk about lower funnel products that you're excited about for 2026? What gets you most excited and kind of what's the biggest near-term impact do you think investors should be thinking about? Thanks so much.

Steven Huffman: Okay. Thanks, Andrew. First question on logged-out users coming in from search. Look, our focus is on growing, you know, logged-in app users. And so we do that in two ways. One, of course, we want to convert some of those search users into logged-in, and I think there's more we can do there. I don't think that's going to be our best channel long term just because of what the user's doing. Right? They're running a search. They might be on the Internet to get off the Internet. But I do think we can do more there.

For example, something we've been doing this year is showing those users not just the direct post they're arriving on, but also a Reddit, Inc. answer summary of the topic that's about. And that has helped to increase engagement from those users. So there's plenty we can do there. I actually think the biggest opportunity are the users who are opening the Reddit, Inc. app for the first time. These are the users who are coming for the community and conversation product. And I think we have the biggest opportunity here to give them a better experience, improve their retention, which will obviously compound into more app growth. So that's the cohort that we care the most about.

Second question, Jen, was lower funnel products.

Jennifer Wong: Oh, I can I love talking about the lower funnel, and I am excited about a lot of things. So I'll just pick three. One is the engine automation, which we've been testing. Really excited about that to make our platform easier, more accessible. I think that allows for the thousands of advertisers who aren't on Reddit, Inc. today, some of them small, to make it easier for them to activate and onboard onto Reddit, Inc. and then allows us to deliver even more performance. We love making the impressions work harder for our customers and delivering more outcomes for them. The second is shopping. Shopping is something that we're really pleased with the results that shopping or DPA delivers.

And we had a partnership with Smartly that we announced and a piece of that is also just doing work together on shopping. Which we're excited about. And so doing really optimistic of the opportunity around shopping. So that's another piece. And also how shopping can come alive on our platform in general. And then the third is the ongoing work we're doing in app and install. We've been working on our measurement there and the attribution and this journey of becoming a SAN.

And that can I think be very powerful in terms of measurement making sure that advertisers see all the value we're delivering and then two, for signals that go into the ML for even stronger optimization for app install.

Operator: Next question comes from Josh Beck from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Josh Beck: Thank you so much for taking the question. I wanted to discuss the onboarding flows a little bit, if obviously has historically had you know, quite a few steps and, you know, quite a few kind of tiles to choose interest. I think the goal is to simplify that. I'm just kind of curious as you've done the experimentation with the new flows, is it getting to a place where it's, you know, maybe closer to going GA or, you know, how should we think about maybe what you've learned so far? And how should we think about maybe the rollout there?

Steven Huffman: Thanks, Josh. Great question. Yes. Lots of steps. We want to get rid of those steps. I think the best pitch for Reddit, Inc. is Reddit, Inc.'s content. And making sure you know, that first feed is amazing. And one of the big developments that we've had over the last couple of years since we released the kind of onboarding as we know it, the topic-based selection, is our feed is much more capable. It's actually the top driver of new subreddit subscriptions today. So getting users into that feed sooner and letting the feed and the ML do the work of making good community recommendations. So we're pushing very hard here.

Getting some things on the task and then hopefully beyond soon as possible. So I think this is one of our biggest levers.

Operator: Our next question comes from Douglas Anmuth from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Douglas Anmuth: Thanks so much for taking the question. I apologize if this has been asked, but there's just been a lot of discussion around how Reddit, Inc. shows up on search and on large language model results. Can you just help us understand how that ties to the value of your data licensing deals? Or do you view these as kind of two more distinct or separate items? Thanks.

Steven Huffman: Thanks for the question, Doug. Look. I think our relationships with the kind of search LLM companies are multifaceted. Right? Their products are different. For sure. And so we look at, I think, all of the different ways that there can be a value exchange. Look. Our top priority is growing the Reddit, Inc. community and conversation product. And so really helping our flywheel go faster. And I think looking the other direction, we can help these companies deliver kind of better search results in those moments. And so that's our attitude. Or that's our position in this space. Is how can we make how can we use these relationships to grow the core Reddit, Inc. product?

Let's say, I guess, the color commentary there is I think our relationships are as healthy and collaborative as ever. And so I think, having interesting conversations on how we can help each other do this. Because we've learned so much over the last couple of years. So I think we got into this place where it's been maybe perhaps a simpler place. But now I think we usually have much more confidence in where our products are going. And of course, I'll just remind everybody that our core business is ads and, you know, that's really the driver of Reddit, Inc.'s revenue.

Operator: Our next question comes from Richard Greenfield from Light Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Richard Greenfield: Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I guess, Steve, more than anything else, you've talked about 50% of your traffic comes direct and 50% from Google. I guess if you just think from a very high level, what are the top three or up five, whatever the best number to think about is, what are the best drivers of someone becoming a Reddit, Inc. app user? Like, what determines that because that's obviously where you make your money and what is the biggest determinant of your success.

Steven Huffman: Thanks for the question, Rich. I'd say those numbers are approximate. But pretty close. Look. The way somebody becomes a Reddit, Inc. user, an app user, is they install the app and they find amazing content. We see a lot of new app users every day. And plenty of what we call, like, a reinstall or opportunity for a reengagement every day. And so this is why I keep bringing your and our team's attention back to that first open experience. And making sure there are no barriers between the user and seeing content on Reddit, Inc. because the biggest driver of retention is following subreddits that are relevant to your interests. And so it's not rocket science.

Now Reddit, Inc. is very, very broad, and we don't always have a lot of information coming in. And so, you know, we do have to do that work. Our machine learning there has gotten much better. And then Jen was earlier describing opportunities where we know where a user is coming from, from a particular content source, you know, whether it's a category source, so call it parenting or gaming or TV shows or whatever, to give them a tailored feed as well. And so that's really the way that we think about it.

I think we have enough shots on goal here every day that, you know, improving this process will make the whole Reddit, Inc. machine run much more efficiently.

Operator: Our next question comes from Benjamin Black from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Benjamin Black: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Jen, I guess could you talk a little bit about the operating environment you're seeing as we head into 4Q holiday shopping season? And what assumptions have you baked into the guide from a macro perspective? And then secondly, Drew, one on margins, I guess, good deed goes unpunished. You already hit your margin targets that you laid out. The IPO. So when we look ahead, your incremental margins are hovering around the 60% range. How should we think about potentially sort of updated margin targets? Thank you.

Jennifer Wong: Okay, great. I can take the first one. Look, I'd say the macros for us, the market feels largely stable, broadly stable. I'd say there's low visibility. I'd say tariffs are on the minds of some of our customers. Efficiency is important. We're certainly delivering that. And we're definitely counseling our customers as they're navigating through a very dynamic environment and as they're thinking about investment across the funnel. I mean, the great news is we have a full funnel offering, so we can meet their needs. I think, broadly. So I think it's broadly been stable. In Q3.

Andrew Vollero: Ben, on the margin side of things, you're right. That was our target, that 40% margin that we talked about, that was our North Star during the IPO. It's nice to hit it. Six quarters in. So that is something. The guidance you probably picked up on in the fourth quarter is even higher than 40. I think how we think about it is in the North Star is going to be something more than 40. We're thinking that it's probably in the 50 range. That's our North Star. I think it's a couple of things that are important on the day-to-day and kind of the near and midterm. Obviously, we want margins to be higher. They will go higher.

It won't be every quarter. I think that's the piece that I want to make sure that people understand here. We're really building a business, and we'll invest in things where it makes sense. You have a 90 gross margin. You just have the ability here to really do special things if you can get growth. And so there may be times that we'll have to invest in our business periodically. I think right now we're doing fine and things continue to scale well. But for a North Star, I think 50 makes sense. I think in the medium term, we'll be focused on better than 40,000,000. Like that's how we'll be thinking about it.

And then remember that our business won't always be that way quarter to quarter. We reserve the right to be strategic to grow our business.

Operator: Our next question comes from Kenneth Gawrelski from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Kenneth Gawrelski: Thank you. Two, if I may, please. Two probably directed to Jen. First, could you talk about, I mean, first, impressive expansion of the advertiser count again this quarter. Jen, can you speak to whether self-serve has become a meaningful part of that account expansion yet or when it may become meaningful? And then maybe a second one, probably also for you, Jen. Is could you talk about how marketers may use you for GEO, like generative AI optimization. Is this a major use case for your advertisers? And could you walk us through your pitch? Thank you.

Jennifer Wong: Sure. So on self-serve, we do have self-serve today, but it's not a big part of our business. We want to have a self-serve, and I think the end-to-end automation work that we're doing will be a great step in that direction for more advertisers who want to operate on a self-serve basis. But it has been the focus. I mean, our focus is on, you know, the advertisers who really have a lot of significant budget. Who do want somebody to talk to in, you know, in some in a lot of cases.

So they're in our managed segment, either our large customer segment, mid-market, or even our managed SMB segment, where they provide some light counsel to them, and we're in, like, what I would call a hybrid configuration where we're kind of both hands-on keyboard working together in a light way. Our strategy is to maximize the opportunity across the biggest part of the market, and that sits right now in the managed segment and to optimize, like, put the customer in the right service channel that maximizes their experience and their ability to spend on Reddit, Inc. So we're not religious about self-serve.

I think we're really focused on the right service model for the right advertiser to be successful on the platform and get what they need. But I think self-serve is something that we're interested in as we build more automation. The second one was about optimizing for, I guess, LLMs. And, you know, look, I think, Reddit, Inc.'s corpus of information is clearly invaluable and helpful to LLMs because it's human conversation that's fresh. It's authentic. It's just distinctive. There's nothing like it. And we know that LLMs appreciate Reddit, Inc.'s conversation. But when marketers come to us, they're coming to us because that conversation is on Reddit, Inc.

And for the opportunity to find customers and engage those customers in an environment where that conversation is happening. Because when they're in that environment, on Reddit, Inc., they're getting the engagement converting to outcomes that help them grow their business. I don't think it's about, you know, the influence in LLMs. That's a secondary product of our core amazing platform, the conversations and communities, the marketers are getting is real value from the Reddit, Inc. platform itself. In terms of converting that engagement to real business outcomes for them. It just so happens that environment of that conversation is also appreciated by LLMs. But that environment is on Reddit, Inc.

Operator: Our next question comes from Rohit Kulkarni from ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Rohit Kulkarni: Hey. Thank you. A couple of questions. One, user mix. As in engagement is resident number of users that is in. Can you talk about how the mix has evolved over time over the last couple of years, maybe in terms of people who actively contribute versus who just come in there to consume or then there are those in between people who amplify to voting and sharing content. And then second is on ARPU, any drivers on underlying ARPU growth, how much is ad load contributing to ARPU growth? Versus other factors? Thank you.

Steven Huffman: Thanks for the questions. On user mix, yeah, there's been some movement there. I'd say it's in a fairly consistent range. It's something we think a lot about. We haven't talked about it much on this call. Well, we did a little bit. So, our strategy around contribution is when we say that, we're really referring to helping new users post successfully on Reddit, Inc. And eliminating roadblocks there. One of which we're working very hard on, which is when a user shows up to Reddit, Inc., and they want to contribute but they may not be aware that there's a bunch of rules in the community they're writing to.

And so we try to catch that early in the journey to give them feedback or find them other places to submit. So that's been testing very well. And improving kind of the contributor mix there. And then Reddit, Inc. does have multiple ways of contributing. You described a cohort of users that we colloquially call the lurkers. These are people who don't write comments, but they vote. And the voting is very important for ranking. And, you know, today on Reddit, Inc., you can't leave a comment or a vote unless you're logged in. So getting more people logged in, so this brings us back, of course, to onboarding in those flows.

Getting people through logged in more successfully, relevant communities more successfully, removing barriers to contribute, and finding content they like to increase the voting engagement. Are all things that push us in the, I think, in the healthy direction. I think there's a lot of opportunity here because there's friction at each of those steps. And then the second question, Jen, was ARPU and ad load.

Jennifer Wong: Yes. Sure. I can take that one on ARPU. So, you know, just a reminder, our strategy is to make every impression more valuable. By delivering hard outcomes, more clicks, more conversions. In Q3, we saw eCPM grow, but the quarter had impressions grow was a bigger contributor. There are three components that drove the impressions: one is user engagement, and then also ads and comments. Then also a temporary operating point that we had when we had a balance between balancing supply and demand in ad load. Just to address ad load directly. So our ad load overall, if you look at the feed compared to peers, is much lower than our peers.

And it is not a core part of our strategy to increase ad load. Our strategy is to make every impression more valuable and to design ad units for spaces where we don't have ads, like ads and comments. It is an operating point that we do use when we have supply-demand tightness to make sure that the marketplace is consistent for our advertisers. And so we did use that lever temporarily in Q3. We turned it back. So kind of the contributors of impressions in the quarter.

Operator: Our next question comes from Youssef Gully from Truist Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Robert Zeller: Hi, this is Robert on for Youssef. Thanks for taking our question. Just one for me. It seems like new types of AI content are arising and users are also consuming more video. So just curious what Reddit, Inc.'s strategy is in this environment. And, you know, if you're focused on building out answers and integrating publishers, does that imply that the focus of content is still going to be predominantly text-based? Thanks.

Steven Huffman: Great question. So, there's a couple of dimensions to this. So our very high-level positioning for Reddit, Inc. in the AI era is that Reddit, Inc. is for humans by humans. And so, yes, there's plenty of AI content on the Internet. But we want Reddit, Inc. to be a place where humans talk to other humans or people talk to people about the stuff that they're interested in. Now every post on Reddit, Inc., which can be a link, text, image, video, meme, GIF, is really a prompt for conversation. So in terms of what the post is, you know, we don't have a strong feeling there. We just want more posts.

We want to continue to expand the post types that Reddit, Inc. supports. So kind of evolving with the time. And the developer platform, which we haven't talked much about today, is one of our big ways of doing that. So we're seeing all sorts of new posts on Reddit, Inc. Users have rebuilt polls. We've got games. There's stock charts, all sorts of things. But, really, all of these things serve as prompts for conversation. Video on Reddit, Inc. is and has been for a while our fastest-growing content type. Even though we don't think of Reddit, Inc. as a video platform, I think there's a lot of headroom for video on Reddit, Inc.

Both as posts, which is what we see today, but also using video and then potentially down the road audio just as a means of communication. I think there is a kind of very uniquely Reddit, Inc. way of doing video. One of the things that I'm very excited about is we did our first video AMA just a couple of weeks ago. So this was done by NASA. So you can find it. And in this case, NASA hosted the AMA. But all of their astronauts answered in video within the Reddit, Inc. comments. I think this is a really nice way of letting people kind of like, really bring their charisma to these moments.

And video comment replies is kind of this interesting marriage of video, the modern content format, but in the context of a conversation. You know, as opposed to, you know, kind of a long-form, short-form influencer stuff you might see on other platforms. So we just try to think, like, what's the Reddit, Inc. version of this content format? And I think there might be some opportunity there. And then in terms of publishers, yeah. Look. Text isn't going anywhere. Text, you can read quietly. Again, it serves as good as anything as a prompt for conversation. Now with AI, you can turn text into audio for background listening.

And so I don't think, you know, video or AI video, replaces text any more than movies replace books. Really, what happens is the content pie just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and we want to make sure everything works on Reddit, Inc.

Jesse Rose: Hey, Julian. This is Jesse. I think we're kind of bumping up in time here. So I just want to thank everyone for joining. We appreciate it. Look forward to speaking again soon.

Steven Huffman: Thanks all. Thanks, everyone.

Operator: This concludes Reddit, Inc.'s Q3 2025 earnings call. You may now disconnect.

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