AI-powered search lets people get answers without clicking, and referral traffic for some publishers has fallen as much as 60%. With traditional search losing its gatekeeper role, marketers face one question: where do you earn AI visibility?
User-generated content has become a primary source for AI models, and Reddit and YouTube stand out — their crowdsourced, collaborative nature reads as trustworthy to systems like Gemini. The open question is where to put the budget. Reddit offers a largely untapped audience with persistent brand-safety concerns; YouTube has enormous reach but slowing growth and a heavier subscription focus.
Reddit's Q2 ad revenue grew 64% year over year to $762 million, three percentage points ahead of total revenue growth, with 130.3 million global daily active users, up 18%. "In an increasingly automated web, the value of real human perspective has never been higher," said founder and CEO Steve Huffman, who also noted the company crossed $1 million in revenue per employee and eight straight quarters above 60% revenue growth.
The 2024 deal letting Google train on Reddit posts — roughly $60 million a year — may not survive, since Google's AI search has cut into Reddit's traffic. Huffman hinted other buyers are interested in the data. Meanwhile Reddit keeps monetizing native formats: Kia turned an AMA into a livestream during WNBA All-Star Weekend, where player Chiney Ogwumike used a claw machine to pull preselected questions, drawing 61,000 views and 354 upvotes in 72 hours.
YouTube videos are 4.3 times likelier to appear in Google's AI Overviews than in traditional search results, per LQ Digital, while Reddit is 3.9 times likelier to be cited in organic search. Gemini trains on YouTube video, and YouTube is Alphabet-owned — citing it keeps users inside Google's properties.
But Gemini is not the only model that matters. Profound data shows ChatGPT cites Reddit 2.4% of the time, more than double YouTube's 0.99%.
Google's Search and other revenue reached $63.3 billion in Q2, up 17%, driven largely by AI advancements. In April the company took AI Max for Search out of beta and said legacy formats including Dynamic Search Ads convert to the new model in September. Google still holds most of the leverage over what users see.
Treat this as choosing a model, not a platform. If Gemini and AI Overviews are the target, build video assets with clean captions and chapters on YouTube. If ChatGPT citations are the target, build genuinely useful Reddit threads that answer real questions. Either way, promotional copy does not get cited — content a human would call helpful does, which matches the pattern in Entity SEO: AI Search Looks for the Source of a Concept. For Reddit's underlying business health, see Reddit Reaches 130.3M Daily Actives — Revenue Up 61%, But Referral Dependence Remains.
It depends on the model you care about. YouTube is 4.3x likelier to appear in Google AI Overviews, while ChatGPT cites Reddit 2.4% of the time versus YouTube's 0.99%.
Referral traffic has fallen as much as 60% for some publishers as users get answers without clicking through.
The roughly $60-million-a-year agreement signed in 2024 is uncertain. Google's AI search has cut Reddit's traffic, and CEO Steve Huffman has suggested other buyers may be interested in the data.
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