Smartly integrates Reddit ads into AI-powered marketing platform to unlock high-intent audience reach

Smartly, a leading AI-powered advertising technology platform, has officially integrated Reddit into its cross-channel campaign management ecosystem. This strategic move enables brands to execute, manage, and measure Reddit campaigns with the same automation, creative intelligence, and unified workflows that define Smartly’s approach to performance marketing. The integration, announced from Smartly’s headquarters in New York, comes as Reddit accelerates its transformation into a commerce-enabled social media platform, offering advertisers direct access to high-intent purchasing audiences.

With over 108 million daily active users and more than 100,000 active communities, Reddit presents a unique blend of authenticity and commercial intent. Smartly’s platform integration leverages these attributes, allowing marketers to design intelligent, real-time campaigns that resonate with niche, engaged audiences. The expansion represents a critical milestone in Smartly’s broader vision to bridge creative and media execution across Connected TV (CTV), social networks, and the open web, all from a single interface.

Why Is Smartly Integrating Reddit Into Its AI Ad Platform?

Reddit’s influence as a decision-making hub for online shoppers has steadily risen, and Smartly’s new integration is designed to help marketers harness this influence with precision. According to Brandwatch data covering the six months through March 2024, Reddit accounts for more than half of all online purchasing decision conversations. This positions it as an intent-driven platform uniquely aligned with Smartly’s capabilities in dynamic creative optimization and automation.

By joining Smartly’s platform portfolio—which already includes Amazon, Meta, Google, Pinterest, Snap, and TikTok—Reddit becomes part of a unified ecosystem where brands can coordinate campaigns using data-driven ad creatives. These creatives adapt in real-time to user behavior, enabling better engagement and conversion. Smartly’s unified workflow eliminates friction across fragmented ad buying and media management processes, turning what was once operational complexity into a streamlined engine for brand performance.

How Does the Smartly-Reddit Integration Improve Advertiser Reach and Relevance?

The core value of this integration lies in campaign agility, creative automation, and audience targeting within Reddit’s rich community-driven structure. Smartly’s platform enables advertisers to dynamically generate, test, and optimize image and video creatives tailored to Reddit’s tone and culture. The capability to launch Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) within Reddit’s shopping surfaces allows advertisers to serve contextually relevant offers that match user intent in real time.

Reddit’s Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong noted that Reddit’s community-driven model makes it ideal for brands looking to connect with consumers around shared interests. Through the Smartly integration, advertisers can now meet users with timely, authentic messaging—without compromising scale or performance. This is particularly important for categories like gaming, tech, fashion, and consumer electronics, where Reddit has cultivated highly engaged consumer subcultures.

Smartly CEO Laura Desmond added that the move will help brands align storytelling with real-time community conversations. The platform’s creative intelligence framework ensures that each campaign adapts to Reddit’s fast-moving discussion environment, combining speed with relevance in a way that manual ad management can’t match.

What Makes Reddit a Unique Addition to Smartly’s Ecosystem?

Unlike traditional social platforms that rely heavily on passive content consumption, Reddit’s structure encourages active dialogue, debate, and recommendation—making it a fertile environment for influence-based commerce. From subreddits focused on personal finance and skincare routines to home improvement and investing tips, Reddit’s communities double as peer-driven product review forums. The integration with Smartly allows brands to enter these spaces with contextual relevance and creative sensitivity.

Reddit’s move to commercialize its platform through native shopping ads, most notably Dynamic Product Ads, shows a strategic shift toward monetizing shopping intent. Smartly’s AI-powered platform now provides the infrastructure for these campaigns to scale quickly and effectively, all while preserving Reddit’s user-first experience.

How Does This Align with Broader Trends in AI-Powered Advertising?

Smartly’s integration of Reddit fits into a growing industry trend of automating creative at scale across performance marketing channels. As third-party cookies decline and privacy constraints mount, advertisers are shifting toward contextual and intent-based targeting strategies. Platforms like Reddit, which surface genuine user conversations and product mentions organically, are increasingly seen as privacy-compliant alternatives to traditional behavioral targeting.

Smartly’s creative automation tools—backed by AI—use first-party data and user interactions to generate relevant ad formats in real time. According to PwC-validated outcomes from existing Smartly campaigns, advertisers using the platform see up to 5.5x returns on ad spend (ROAS) and save approximately 42 minutes per hour through workflow automation. These efficiencies make Smartly one of the most operationally lean and performance-focused tools available to enterprise marketers.

Reddit’s inclusion in this system extends these capabilities to one of the internet’s most culturally dynamic and commerce-relevant spaces. The partnership ensures that ad spend on Reddit is as measurable and performance-optimized as campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube.

What Does This Mean for Brands Going Forward?

With Reddit now available within the Smartly interface, brands can approach their cross-platform marketing strategies with a more holistic and data-integrated mindset. From testing creative variations across Reddit’s shopping and lifestyle communities to leveraging Smartly’s attribution models and cross-channel insights, advertisers have a powerful new lever for consumer engagement.

For brands pursuing Gen Z and Millennial audiences—who disproportionately populate Reddit’s active user base—the integration enables more authentic advertising rooted in real conversations. Combined with Smartly’s AI-driven creative stack, these campaigns can now go from ideation to launch within compressed timelines, all while maintaining brand safety and message coherence.

As Reddit continues its commercial evolution, Smartly’s integration positions it not only as a creative intelligence leader but also as a key enabler of commerce media strategies in the cookieless, conversation-first digital era.