The Anti-Algorithm: Why Reddit's Refusal to Track You Is Marketing Gold [+ Video]

There's a quiet revolution happening in the digital world, and it's being led by people with usernames like u/CatLover47 and u/TruckEnthusiast2024. 

While other platforms wage algorithmic warfare for your attention, Reddit users have formed an underground resistance movement with a simple but radical mission: let humans decide what's actually worth seeing.

Redditors are forming the most democratically powerful focus groups. They've weaponized transparency, turned privacy into a superpower, and made "community-first" more than just a buzzword. 

In my recent conversation with Rob Gaige, Global Head of Insights at Reddit, he decodes how this rebel alliance is reshaping the marketing landscape, one genuine conversation at a time. Find out why brands are ditching their algorithmic overlords and joining the resistance — because when 78% of people follow advice from strangers on the internet, you better make sure those strangers are on your side.

To watch the full interview, check out the video below:

This interview is part of G2’s Q&A series. For more content like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a newsletter with SaaS-y news and entertainment.

Inside the industry with Rob Gaige

Reddit users share their candid thoughts across 100,000+ communities. What's the most surprising insight your team has uncovered about human behavior that traditional market research would have missed?

The insights we find can be as wide-ranging as big new movements. For instance, veganism started on Reddit well before mainstream Western media picked up on it. But what I find more interesting are the smaller movements, the little microcultures that brands can really latch onto and connect with in a different way.

One example is what we call "wash day." A car brand came to us wanting to launch a new truck in a culturally relevant way, so we analyzed how people talk about trucks across various subreddits. We kept finding this interesting phrase "wash day" — usually a picture of someone proudly standing next to their freshly washed car or truck, smiling big.

And what we found, the human insight behind that which was super fascinating, was that they weren't celebrating the adventure they'd had. Unlike typical car commercials showing trucks going through mud and rivers, these people were celebrating when their vehicle was clean and returned to new condition. They were almost anticipating the next adventure. There was a sense of pride and personal connection that went well beyond just the purchase. These sorts of microcultures and magic moments turn the marketing paradigm on its head and give fresh life to pretty old ideas.

How has your approach to data collection and audience insights evolved since you joined the company?

One thing I love about Reddit is our dedication to privacy and protecting personal information. We don't collect a lot of PI and certainly don't use it the same way other companies do. This has meant we've had to change how we provide insights to advertisers.

We focus heavily on contextual advertising — understanding from the context of conversations where your ad might be relevant and who you might be talking to. It's a leaned-in audience raising their hand and saying, "I'm interested in this topic," so the ad makes more sense.

This approach was incredibly labor-intensive until about a year and a half ago, with the leap in AI and advancements in large language models (LLM). Now we can use AI to crawl millions of posts and comments in near real time, illuminating thematic clusters that serve as contextual hooks for advertisers, almost like a contextual segmentation model.

What we've added is a layer of engagement data on top. I've always believed mentions are at best a vanity metric. People focus on how often someone said their name, which undersells the importance of the context around brand conversations — how many people viewed it, how many upvoted or downvoted, and whether they're agreeing or disagreeing with points about your brand. The power of LLMs combined with our metadata and engagement data has illuminated brand new insights we never would have found before.

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Reddit has historically maintained a different advertising approach compared to other social platforms, emphasizing community-driven formats like AMAs (Ask Me Anything), targeted engagement in special interest subreddits, etc. How has your marketing strategy evolved while preserving Reddit's community-first ethos?

My advice to every advertiser coming to Reddit is to think about how they're adding value to the community first and foremost. Many advertisers use the term "community management," but I think that's completely wrong for Reddit communities. You can't manage these communities. They're groups of peers and equals who all contribute and have the opportunity to up or downvote your content. Advertisers need a similar mindset.

On the paid side, contextual keyword advertising is fantastic. You can place your advertisement directly in the comment flow of a post, so you know the exact context and problem the consumer is trying to address. You can match your value proposition to that perfectly. People come with an open mind and an information-seeking mindset, making them more likely to remember what you're saying.

On the organic side, our new product, Reddit Pro, helps brands understand what conversations they should be part of. Find conversations where people need the information you have. And it may not be directly related to your industry. Your brand might be helping enable the passions of a broader world. Go out there, engage with them, excite them, and continually add value. That's an easy way to increase brand love and get people talking about you positively.

Be a fan of the things your customers are fans of.

Rob Gaige
Global Head of Insights at Reddit

Many platforms are moving toward algorithm-curated content and away from chronological feeds, yet Reddit has maintained much of its traditional structure. What does Reddit understand about online communities that other platforms might be overlooking?

It feels like Reddit has kept our soul and point of view for so long, and now, culture has caught up to us. What's beautiful about Reddit content is that every piece starts from zero. It doesn't matter who you are or what you've posted before, it's judged solely on the merits of that post or comment. The community has the opportunity to select what they believe is most interesting, engaging, helpful, or funny. We don't need an algorithm to manipulate that because the humans in the space are voting and allowing content to rise or fall.

Reddit exists in a world of subreddits — like little cities with their own governments, rules, and guidelines. If you post a picture of a dog on r/cats, it's not allowed and gets removed. We don't need algorithms to find the good content because it's all organized and categorized by subreddits, and then the communities decide what they like.

We can use algorithms to help with discovery when you want to be surprised or find something new, but when you want to stay within your subreddit or communities you love, we let the humans decide what's best to look at.

With the rise of AI-generated content, how is Reddit planning to maintain the authenticity of its communities as it becomes more difficult to distinguish between human and AI-generated content?

Individual people aren't always great at spotting AI, but a community of individuals is. They build on one another, point things out, and then suppress it through the upvote-downvote feature.

Rob Gaige
Global Head of Insights at Reddit

One advantage of Reddit's subreddit organization is that there's less incentive for AI to drive viral content across the board because it's difficult—you'd have to do it one subreddit at a time.

More importantly, I don't think about AI in black-and-white terms. There are subreddits that love AI content —they want to see AI-generated photos and videos because it's fun and exciting. The key is transparency. We have "flairs" that let you designate when a post is AI-generated, and if the subreddit rules allow it, it's okay.

In the long term, we differentiate between AI from outside flooding communities with unwanted content and AI that helps create useful content. One of my favorite examples is r/whatsthisbug, where you post bug pictures and people identify them. There's a rule requiring location information, but people forget constantly. AI could read posts beforehand and remind users about missing location data or proper sourcing. Communities have guidelines and culture, and AI can help ensure people follow subreddit norms for a successful experience.

We don't see AI as helpful or evil. It's about transparency and adding value. If the community finds it useful, engaging, and exciting, that's our bar, and we let humans decide.

What marketing metrics do you believe are undervalued in the user-generated content (UGC) industry that Reddit pays particular attention to?

I've been on a war against mentions my entire career — I think it's the worst metric to use. We lean heavily on view data, particularly when layered with additional metadata.

One interesting thing about Reddit content is that, because it's heavily indexed on search engines and LLMs, many posts and comments get traffic well past their original posting date. Unlike other platforms, where you see a massive spike and then nothing, on Reddit, over 50% of view volume comes after a week, month, or year. We have posts that have gotten views every single day for three years —usually product posts.

This means these are information-heavy posts driving view volume because they're so helpful that people actively seek them out. They act more like Wikipedia articles — catalogs or historical references to necessary information.

I encourage partners to focus on that long tail — what happens after a week, month, or year. That tells you there's something in that post people continually find valuable. If you're a product company and can assemble all those posts with historical long tails into thematic clusters, you can derive really interesting insights.

We're working toward adding time spent per post view to see when someone didn't just view for three seconds but came back a month later and spent 10 minutes reading every post and comment. We're creating a hierarchy of views: casually viewed in the moment, viewed over time, and obsessed over — the most important, impactful, and studied posts and comments. We want to put different weights on all of those.

Any advice for marketers out there? What should they be looking out or preparing for?

We're talking a lot about the change in the purchase journey. I believe we're now in a constant state of consideration where we literally can't turn off the advertising coming to us. We're constantly bombarded, and advertisers are obsessed with awareness or breakthrough, trying to cut through clutter, and then performance at the bottom of the funnel.

We're seeing incredible stats showing that 91% of people who discover a product on another platform pass through Reddit to validate the claims they're finding.

Rob Gaige
Global Head of Insights at Reddit

I encourage folks to think hard about consideration and validation. There's decreased trust in information sources and increased value in understanding community opinions. Yet advertising spend hasn't correlated with this behavior change.

There's an arbitrage opportunity. Smart advertisers should focus on consideration, validation, and middle-funnel messaging to essentially influence the people who will influence others passing through later. Someone discovers a product elsewhere, comes to ask Redditors for advice, and 78% follow that advice.

My question to advertisers is: What do you want those Redditors to say? Will they support your value proposition? Will they have reasons why your brand is better than competitors? That's your overlooked opportunity that will have dramatic effects on your performance marketing and full-funnel performance.

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Follow Rob Gaige on LinkedIn to learn more about building new lines of business, product lines, and consumer segments.

Edited by Supanna Das