Reddit is taking a stand against AI’s growing influence over the open web, and the implications could extend well beyond the platform itself. Its next move raises questions about the future of online publishing, search traffic, and AI-powered discovery.
Among the aggrieved parties in the AI revolution – somewhere on the list between job losses and artist IP – are online publishers. Everyone from the New York Times to your neighborhood mommy blog continues to see their traffic intercepted and coopted by AI engines’ zero-click effect.
This happens as AI engines train on copyrighted content across the interweb, then ingest, synthesize, and formulate answers to user queries. Often the answer is so good, or at least complete, that it negates a given user’s need to click through. Citations are listed but not always followed, as we’ve examined.
This has led to a range of responses, from ambivalence to action. Well-known detractors include Amazon. As we’ve examined in the past and noted yesterday, the e-commerce giant has found ways to disallow AI engines, including agentic shopping, from crawling and training on its product pages.
Now the latest online giant has joined this anti-AI movement: Reddit. On the company’s Q3 earnings, it remarked that it plans to adopt a logged-in experience as a means to erect a registration wall that keeps AI engine crawlers from entering the city gates. It’s been gradually hinting at such moves for months.
Performance & Premiums
To underscore the need for this move, Reddit’s traffic and usage tells a compelling story. U.S. daily active users dropped quarter-over-quarter in Q3 from 53.2 million to 50.7 million. Search traffic referrals also dropped by 1 million+ on average per week in October, and their decline is accelerating.
But while it has lost traffic, Reddit has gotten better at monetizing it. Revenue grew 53 year-over-year to $895 million, despite usage declines. Average revenue per daily active user in the U.S. also grew 53 percent to $13.82. The combination of less traffic and better monetization emboldens a registration wall.
For example, logged-in users will likely be more engaged and self-selected, meaning greater revenue potential per user. Beyond engagement, Reddit will know more about them – by virtue of profile details in their account – thus unlocking audience-based targeting and greater performance and premiums.
To further that end, a logged-in Reddit experience could accommodate things like customized feeds, recommended subreddits, and other things that will make it a more personalized experience. Beyond the ad targeting advantages that flow from that, it will create more sticky and engaged users.
Golden Goose
In addition to preventing AI engines from intercepting its traffic and creating more engaged usage, Reddit could see other benefits from a primary logged-in experience. For example, with its content gated, it opens up possibilities for lucrative licensing deals with AI engines that want to pay a toll to train.
Indeed, its content is valuable enough to ask for a premium. As we’ve noted, Reddit has become the golden goose of the emerging field of AI Engine optimization (AIO). That’s simply because it’s vast and sentiment-rich, which helps AI engines answer questions ranging from DIY plumbing to gift ideas.
In fact, one looming question is if AI engines will slip in quality if they can no longer tap Reddit’s long-tail of topical knowledge. In the same breath is the question of whether presence on Reddit will slip in its newfound importance in AIO. If Reddit goes through with this, the answer to both questions is likely yes.
Meanwhile, what can we expect next? Reddit has made it known that this shift to a logged-in experience is real, but it could take a while. Indeed, it will need to step into this closely for technical and practical reasons. To that end, it will run its first tests throughout Q4 and phase things in over the coming months.
