The news: Reddit unveiled a suite of new advertising tools powered by Reddit Community Intelligence at Cannes Lions 2026 on Monday. Using data from over 25 billion posts and comments, the tools help brands generate creative material and target consumers to “build campaigns that are rooted in genuine human perspectives,” Reddit said.

Why it matters: Modern consumers are experiencing a crisis of trust with digital information, increasing the value of peers’ opinions. Instead of relying solely on professional critics or standard influencers, audiences are actively turning to crowd-sourced reviews.

• 71% percent of US digital shoppers trust customer ratings and reviews for online purchases, compared with 34% for experts and 12% for influencers, per Bizrate Insights.
• 60.1% of US social media shoppers read product review posts during the consideration phase of shopping—just below short-form video at 60.4%, per a July 2025 EMARKETER survey.

Zooming out: Reddit’s Path to Purchase research underscores how community validation accelerates intent. Rather than just browsing, users are actively leveraging the platform as a definitive research layer; nearly half of US shoppers use Reddit to verify AI-generated product recommendations, and one in five explicitly include "Reddit" in their search queries to find trustworthy information.

The platform ranks number one among all social spaces for driving fast purchase decisions. That validation yields immediate action, with one in four Reddit users buying a product the moment they see their purchase choice backed up by the community.

To help marketers scale this community-driven trust, Reddit is modernizing its ad stack with new formats that blur the line between advertising and organic conversation. Through tools like the Free-Form Ad Generator and Tailored Creative Assets, the platform uses machine learning to dynamically blend a brand's assets into native, long-form posts while automatically tailoring headlines for high-potential subreddits. Additionally, formats like Redditor Highlights and Shopping Listing Ads allow brands to pull actual peer feedback directly into paid creatives or place product carousels beneath live threads.

Instead of forcing standard formats onto an audience seeking authenticity, these updates allow marketers to weave their messaging directly into the community validation process: In early testing, Canada Goose achieved a 2.58 times return on ad spend and a 10.5 point lift in ad awareness with Free-Form ads. TodayTix saw a 7% lift in app installs using Redditor Highlights.

Implications for advertisers: Reddit has become a critical step in the modern purchase path, serving as a verification layer where users cross-reference automated recommendations and commercial claims with real-world human experiences.

Reddit is helping marketers capture high-intent users directly inside the threads where buying decisions are finalized. By leveraging community intelligence and updated machine learning architectures, advertisers can deploy creative that mirrors organic community behavior and establish brand credibility through peer validation.