With over 52 million daily active users in the world across over 100,000 communities Reddit is the “front page of the Internet”. Now with Australia home to their fourth largest user base and growing at 40% year on year, Reddit is opening up offices in Sydney.
The new offices will be Reddit’s first bast of operations in the Southern Hemisphere with the new local team comprising locally-based Community, Engineering and Sales staff, as well as Country Manager, David Ray — former Woolworths Group and Amazon executive. The Australian business is already partnering with local entities, working with Australian-based moderators and communities, and establishing local brand partnerships.
“We’ve been fortunate to experience strong organic growth from our Australian user base in recent years, and with this comes a significant opportunity to level-up our local offering in a more focussed and nuanced way,” said Reddit Chief Operating officer, Jen Wong. “From building out our highly engaged Australian communities to finding homes for local brands on the platform, this launch is just the beginning of our investment in the market and key to our wider international vision as we continue to scale Reddit at pace.”
So who uses Reddit in Australia? The r/australia subreddit has over 700,000 members in itself and of course there many other locally based subreddits. Aside from that the user activity mimics global trends with gaming, crypto and entertainment popular. There are of course AFL and NRL subreddits in the top 10 Australian communities list.
But is it really all that popular? Seems so with Australians spending on average 31 minutes per day on Reddit — more than they do on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Pinterest. We contribute over 158 million posts, comments, and votes on Reddit every month. Aussies on Reddit also make for a different environment with 40% of Reddit users in Australia not on Twitter, 20% not on Facebook, 23% not on Instagram, 51% not on Snapchat and 70% are not on TikTok.
“Reddit is a cultural phenomenon and a great platform for brands wishing to connect with customers, fans, and advocates who influence brand loyalty and purchase decisions,” said UM’s US Chief Digital Officer, Joshua Lowcock. “As an Australian expat living in New York, I have seen first-hand the success clients have had working with Reddit. Investing in a dedicated Australian presence and local approach to community and moderation will reinforce Reddit’s market position for locally-based brands and advertisers seeking to navigate the depth and breadth of the platform and unlock its immense value.”
So what does it mean for the average Aussie Redditor? Not much but they will start to see more local products appearing in their feeds with more marketing opportunities for local businesses. If you have a business/product and want to learn about the advertising opportunities on Reddit register over on this link. After a very rough 18 months for Aussie businesses this is hopefully a shot in the arm to help some of them make up some of the ground lost since the beginning of last year.
In the meantime Aussie Redditors I’ll see you on my favourite subreddit, ChoosingBeggars although MaliciousCompliance is a close second.
