As it looks to maximize its opportunities, and continue the expansion of its ad business, Reddit has today announced that it's opening a new office in Canada, which will include dedicated management, sales, community and engineering teams in Toronto.
As explained by Reddit:
"Home to our third largest user base after the US and UK - and growing by 40% year-over-year - Canada is the natural next place for Reddit to establish a new, on-the-ground presence. Our team based in Toronto is already partnering with local entities, establishing programs for community engagement, servicing local Canadian brands and marketers, and is managed by Reddit’s Head of International, Tariq Mahmoud, who was at the helm of Reddit’s 2020 expansion to the UK."
The new team will provide more opportunity for Reddit to connect with local Canadian businesses, and offer them new avenues to connect with the platform's engaged userbase - which, as Reddit notes, is growing at a steady rate.
In addition, Reddit has also offered some new insight into its Canadian audience, and where it's seeing the most growth in the market.
"In Canada, our users skew young with 59% aged between 18 - 34, and more than 40% of users are female. At 31 minutes a day, Reddit users in Canada spend more time in-app than almost all other social media platforms."
That could facilitate new opportunities for marketers - though, for some, there is still some hesitancy around advertising in the app.
Over time, Reddit has traditionally been seen as a bit of a lawless frontier of the web, dedicated to upholding free speech at all costs, but more recently, the platform has looked to clean-up its act, in the hopes of attracting more usage and ad spend.
Last year, for example, Reddit expanded its action to eliminate hate speech on its platform, with the removal of thousands of the most controversial subreddits, which many users had been calling for action against for years. That was the latest in a range of rule updates and changes that Reddit has implemented to bring its platform more into line with mainstream expectation, which has lead to clashes with long-time users as it seeks to change the direction of the app.
But those efforts have been paying off. The platform is now serving some 52 million daily active users, across its vast range of highly active subreddits, which cover pretty much every topic that you can imagine - and many you can't - in a range of forms.
And as Reddit notes here, those users are also spending a lot of time in-app, at 31 minutes per day for Canadian users. For comparison, eMarketer estimates that people are now spending around 37 minutes per day on Facebook, while Instagram and Snapchat are likely at around 29 minutes and 26 minutes respectively.
Those usage levels, along with its enhanced focus on improving the quality of user interactions, could make it a more appealing destination for more brand campaigns - while Reddit also recently announced a new enterprise partnership agreement with Omnicom Media Group, putting its ad options on the radar of even more businesses.
Dedicated local teams is the next step in this direction, and the engagement among Canadian users makes it an ideal focus in this respect.
"On Reddit, users are connected by interests rather than demographics, and this makes for an environment of highly engaged, authentic and passionate communities that can’t be found anywhere else online. In Canada, more than 20% of Reddit users are not on Facebook, while 70% are not on TikTok and almost 35% are not on Twitter."
Reddit says that it's already working with various iconic local brands, including Tim Hortons, Lenovo and General Mills.
For Canadian brands, that could facilitate new opportunities for your campaigns, and new considerations within your broader digital marketing approach.