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Industry · 2 min read2 September 2026

17 Million Australians Are on Reddit and Most Media Plans Still Treat It as a Test

Australia is now one of Reddit's top five markets, with about 17 million monthly users, 40% audience growth and a doubled local commercial team. Reddit reaches audiences other platforms miss, but it punishes marketing that sounds like marketing, so brands have to show up as humans.

2 min read

The Take: Reddit spent years as the site marketers read and never bought. In Australia that free ride is ending, because the audience got too big to ignore and the ad tools finally caught up. The real question is whether you can talk like a human once you get there.

On the ground: Australia is now one of Reddit's top five markets globally and its third largest platform locally, with about 17 million monthly users and 40% audience growth from 2024 to 2025, Reddit's Australian sales lead told AdNews. The platform opened a local office and roughly doubled its commercial team, so the pitch to Australian advertisers is no longer remote. It has staff in the room.

The tell: The reach that matters is the reach you cannot get elsewhere. Reddit says 45% of its Australian users are not on TikTok and 57% are not on Pinterest, which makes it a genuine top-up rather than the same audience counted twice. The Melbourne subreddit alone runs about 750,000 weekly participants in a city of five million. That is not a fringe. That is a mainstream channel most Australian media plans still treat as an experiment.

17 million

Monthly Australian users on Reddit, now one of the platform's top five markets worldwide

The history: Reddit only launched into the Australian market in 2021, so this is a four-year climb from curiosity to contender. The catch is cultural. Reddit users punish marketing that sounds like marketing faster than any platform going, which is why the brands that win there answer questions and join threads rather than run a banner and leave. The channel rewards being useful and humiliates being lazy.

For Australian operators: Check whether your customers already discuss your category on Reddit before you spend a dollar. Search your brand and your competitors. Read what people actually say and treat it as free research. If you advertise, match the register of the subreddit or you will be ignored. Start with the communities closest to your product. Measure replies and referral traffic rather than impressions. Never hand the tone to someone who has never posted there.

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Filip Ivanković
The Debrief / From Filip Ivanković
One every morning. Six months in, you'll see the patterns most don't.
Strategy, benchmarks, and what's actually moving in Australian marketing. Four-minute read. The reps compound.
Filip Ivanković·Founder, New RebellionAboutLinkedIn