Reddit logo on a mobile phone. Picture: Shutterstock

Editors should treat Reddit like they are “showing up at a cocktail party” according to the platform’s head of news partnerships.

Gabriel Sands spoke to Press Gazette after the forum-style platform launched Pro Tools for Publishers in September.

To succeed with Pro Tools, publishers must shift from “a self-promotional, owned-and-operated mindset to a community-first approach”, said Sands, head of news partnerships at Reddit.

“Redditors are hungry for news,” Sands added, with 75% (Redditors total 70 million weekly active users according to its Q2 results) reading online news at least two to three times a week.

Pro Tools allow publishers to automatically upload content on Reddit by syncing RSS feeds, track Reddit metrics and receive AI suggestions for which subreddit to post in (a subreddit is a forum focused on a specific topic).

While the tools have only been made accessible to a small group of US publishers so far, publishers can sign up to Reddit’s waiting list to access the features in Reddit Pro (which is said to be made available for eligible outlets within one to three weeks).

Sands added publishers will be successful on Pro Tools if they “act like they’re showing up to a cocktail party: take time to read the room, understand what conversations are happening, and think about how you can contribute without disrupting the vibe”.

“The key isn’t altering your content or headlines; it’s finding the right community fit,” he said. “Our AI-powered community suggestion tool cuts across Reddit’s 100,000-plus communities to recommend exactly where your story will resonate for maximum impact.”

A graph showing a publisher’s reach and engagement on the Reddit Pro platform

Publisher content ranked by upvotes

A user cannot tell whether content is posted from Reddit Pro accounts (and its publisher tools), as it appears the same way on-platform as content posted by Reddit user accounts – but content is ranked in order according to upvotes from users.

“The more users that upvote a post or comment, the higher it will rise in a feed and get more reach,” said Sands.

But if a publisher tries to post an article with overlapping content to another publisher, this may be blocked: “Many subreddits have rules that prohibit duplicate submissions, either from the same source or on the same topic,” said Sands.

AI subreddit suggestions to ‘generate conversations’

The insights Pro Tools provides do not include demographic/device information about audiences, while AI suggestions are intended to generate “meaningful conversations” among audiences within the forum.

Reddit has also improved its “link viewing experience” for users reading and discussing articles in an effort to boost engagement, which involves direct access to content on the app without leaving the site. It also allows users to swipe up and access a comments section specific to the article to “engage in news discussion”.

Reddit’s referral traffic to newsbrands was up 220% from six million at the start of 2019 to 19.1 million in July 2025, according to Chartbeat data.

Chartbeat analysis of traffic to 565 leading UK and US newsbrands published by Press Gazette in August 2025 showed Reddit referrals rising sharply.

It found referral traffic of nearly 500 million clicks from Facebook in July 2025 (down roughly 50% in six years). Twitter stood at 31.8 million (again sharply down over the previous six years).

“Our goal is to make Reddit a go-to place for distribution and discussion of real, human perspectives surrounding the latest headlines,” it shared on its website. “We will continue improving this experience with additional functionality that makes Reddit easier to use for publications, editors, and reporters.”

Engage with readers who ‘weren’t hearing from us’

Sarakshi Rai, deputy managing editor at The Hill, a Washington-based political news publication, said Reddit Pro Tools has allowed it “to engage with our readers who previously weren’t hearing from us directly on the platform”.

“We’re able to easily grow The Hill’s presence and foster real discussions around our journalism,” Rai added. “The platform has also become our top social referral traffic source, accounting for a rise of social media traffic to the site.”

Reddit has said that it has a “goal of serving everyone globally by next year” with its Pro Tools.

Reddit’s growing visibility on Google as referral traffic falls

Pro Tools for Publishers has been launched as Reddit continues to benefit from greater visibility on Google since February 2024, after its owner struck a $60m annual deal which allowed Google to make use of its content to train AI models.

According to Daily Beast chief content officer Joanna Coles, growing referral traffic from Reddit and Facebook has cancelled out declining traffic from Google search on the site.

Topics in this article : Reddit

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