Media Briefing: Reddit becomes a more noticeable source of publisher traffic  

This week’s Media Briefing looks at Reddit becoming a top referral channel for some news publishers (although the audience coming from the social media platform isn’t big enough to replace declining search referrals).

• Is Reddit becoming a top referrer?
Google offers buyouts to search employees, Warner Bros. Discovery splits in two and more.

Reddit traffic quietly rising

As generative AI eats into search traffic, publishers are increasingly turning to platforms like Reddit to drive audiences to their sites. 

On some days, Reddit is the top referral channel for Reach’s U.S. operation, said Donna Ogier, the director of US audience at Reach, which owns U.K. and U.S. news sites like Mirror, Express, Daily Record and Daily Star. The U.S. audience to those publications was about 37.5 million unique visitors in April 2025, according to Comscore data.

Reddit has also become the second-highest source of referral traffic from social platforms for The Atlantic and The Hill, according to execs at those publications. They declined to share specific numbers. 

While Reddit still only makes up a small slice of overall traffic, that portion is growing quickly. Some news publishers are seeing notable increases in referral traffic from Reddit, according to desktop data from analytics company Similarweb. For example, Reddit referral traffic for The Daily Beast is up 115% year over year, to 457,000 visits in April 2025. Men’s Journal is up 106% to 7,000 visits, Axios is up 90% to 192,000 visits, HuffPost and The Hill are up 55% (to 356,000 and 309,000, respectively), and The Atlantic is up 48% year over year to 134,000 visits, per Similarweb. 

“We have experienced steady growth since we started using Reddit in January 2024,” said Sarakshi Rai, The Hill’s director of audience development and head of social media.

For example, when the Supreme Court enabled President Donald Trump to deport about a half million immigrants on May 30, Ogier’s team posted Reach’s coverage in the right subreddit (the name of which she declined to share) and the platform became the second top referrer for their sites that day, she said. 

Chartbeat’s data of about 4,500 sites shows Reddit referral traffic has increased in the past year. Reddit sent 34.4 million pageviews to those publishers’ sites in May 2025, up from 29.9 million in May 2024, a 15% increase year over year, according to Chartbeat’s data. 

Though to keep that in context, Reddit makes up less than 1% of publishers’ overall referral traffic.

Unlike Google, which has introduced features that siphon traffic from publishers, Reddit has spent the past year rolling out products and resources designed to help publishers grow their presence on the platform.

This year, Reddit added two new tools to Reddit Pro, the free dashboard for brands and publishers. In January, Reddit introduced the Trends tab to track keyword mentions across Reddit communities and conversations. In May, the platform announced business profile tools to develop brand and publisher presence on Reddit. 

Reddit Pro and its tools have helped Reach’s team get the analytics and insights they need to report to higher-ups how much traffic and reach were coming from the platform. The Hill’s Rai said it helps inform her team’s Reddit strategy as they can see what’s trending, what links have been shared and what content from its website is doing well on the platform. 

Meanwhile, Reddit has been a “big winner” in Google search traffic, noted David Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb. Traffic from Google organic search to Reddit’s platform has more than doubled in the past year. Google started increasing the visibility of forum sites like Reddit in search results last year.

Reddit received 1.2 billion referrals from Google Search in April 2025, up from about 600 million in April 2024, according to Similarweb’s data. Reddit didn’t build its Google deal to boost publisher links – but the fact that Reddit threads appear more in search results, may end up being a beneficial side effect for publishers who have had success with their articles within the platform. 

Reddit still doesn’t have a formal publisher program, but it has a team devoted to working with publishers, led by Gabriel Sands, head of news and lifestyle partnerships.

However, Reddit’s publisher team doesn’t share specific strategies or ideas to help content get visibility, Rai noted. “That’s all up to the teams to learn how to do that through trial and error, which I’ve found is the best way to learn any platform,” she said.

What we’ve heard

“When there’s people who knock on the door, we answer it. We have an obligation to do so. It’s a major asset for the company and we are going to continue to invest in it and grow it.”

— Rob Wilk, CRO of Yahoo, when asked if the company is talking to potential buyers of its demand-side platform.

Numbers to know

1 in 5: The ratio of news sources citations in Google AI Overviews. BBC, NYT and CNN lead with 31% share.

4: The number of days per week Axel Springer plans to mandate its employees work from the office.

15: The number of Spotify layoffs in its podcast business, to focus resources on its video podcast push.

20%: The expected ad revenue increase going to content creators this year, more than the ad revenue forecasted for traditional media companies, according to WPP Media research.

What we’ve covered

How to survive Cannes Lions

• Next week, thousands of marketers and ad execs are expected to brave the French Riviera’s heat for the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity from June 16 to 20.
• Cannes Lions veterans Jim Cooper, Digiday’s editor-in-chief, and Seb Joseph, Digiday’s executive editor of news join the Digiday Podcast’s hosts to share their best tips to navigate the chaos.

Listen to the latest Digiday Podcast episode here.

Lifestyle publishers rewrite the SEO playbook for AI-driven search

• Lifestyle publishers are especially at risk of losing large swaths of their audience from the generative AI features Google is adding to its search engine. Four publishers told Digiday they’d seen Google Search referral traffic drop between 30% and 50% since May 2024. 
• But rather than panic, they’re doubling down on the content that still performs in search — and abandoning what’s not.

Read more here.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney hopes to outbuild YouTube

• Is Fortnite the next YouTube? Perhaps — but Epic Games has higher aspirations.
• At Unreal Fest 2025, Digiday spoke to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and evp of the Fortnite ecosystem Saxs Persson for an in-depth conversation about Fortnite’s evolution, the platform’s approach to creator monetization — and how Epic’s legal battle against Apple helped pave the way for Fortnite’s future as a creator platform.

Read the Q&A here.

A new wave of publishers has signed onto ProRata’s revenue share program

• The Boston Globe, Vox Media and Future, as well as Fast Co. and Inc owner Mansueto Ventures, have joined a group of about a dozen publishers that have recently signed content licensing and revenue share agreements with generative AI startup ProRata, Digiday exclusively learned.
• Their content will help power Gist.ai, an AI-powered search engine.

Read more here.

WPP Media cuts 2025 ad spend predictions

• WPP Media has downgraded its forecasts for global ad spend growth by 1.7%.
• The decision is a reaction to clients responding en masse to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade wars.

Read more here.

What we’re reading

Google offers buyouts to search and advertising employees

Google is offering voluntary buyouts to U.S. employees in its search and ads organizations, The Information reported.

Warner Bros. Discovery splits in two

Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting into two separate publicly traded companies, and CNN will be grouped with its other television networks, according to CNN.

Reddit sues Anthropic

Reddit has sued the AI company Anthropic, claiming that it is illegally “scraping” the comments of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude, The Verge reported. Reddit claims Anthropic’s bots accessed its platform 100,000 times since July 2024.

The Washington Post creates new C-suite AI role

The Washington Post has promoted Sam Han, its head of data and AI, to a newly created C-suite role of Chief AI Officer. It also formed a product incubator unit.

The Guardian unifies programmatic team

The Guardian has unified its programmatic advertising team to span U.K., U.S. and Australian markets, led by Dave Strauss, vp of revenue operations and strategy for the Guardian US.