As search traffic dries up, Reddit announces it’s shifting to a logged-in experience
Reddit is shifting toward a 'logged-in' user experience to protect its data from AI scrapers and capitalize on licensing deals as traditional search engine traffic declines. Despite a drop in U.S. daily active users, the company reported a significant increase in revenue, highlighting a pivot in its monetization strategy.
Why it matters
This move reflects a broader trend among content platforms attempting to reclaim value from AI companies that use their data to train models without providing traffic or revenue.
Reddit has long attracted millions of users to its site through Google, with many even appending the word “Reddit” to their search queries for better answers. But as search traffic dries up amid the shift to AI-powered search, Reddit is rethinking its relationship with the open internet. In its third-quarter earnings on Thursday, the company announced it’s transitioning to a primarily “logged-in experience.”
The move is designed to protect its data from AI scraping, allowing the company to instead forge lucrative licensing deals with model providers. But just as important, such a shift could help Reddit to increase its revenue even as it faces daily active user declines in its largest market, the U.S.
Overall, Reddit’s global daily active users were flat quarter-over-quarter in Q3, reaching 130.3 million, while U.S. daily active users dropped from 53.2 million in Q2 to 50.7 million in Q3 and were down 2% year-over-year.
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