Reddit takes on Meta and Google with automated ‘Max’ ad campaigns

Reddit is stepping further into automated advertising, unveiling a new campaign product called Max campaigns that aims to simplify how marketers buy media on the platform. The company announced the offering at the opening of CES 2026 and said it is now available in beta through Reddit Ads Manager.

Max campaigns are built on Reddit Community Intelligence, a system introduced last year that analyzes the vast stream of posts and comments across the site, combined with artificial intelligence models that estimate the value of each ad impression. Using those predictions, Reddit’s system automatically adjusts campaign settings as ads run, shifting budgets, placements and creative choices in real time. The promise, the company says, is better performance with less hands-on management by advertisers.

The beta version is launching this week for traffic and conversion objectives, with access limited to a small group of advertisers. Reddit said it plans to expand availability gradually over the coming months.

Inside Ads Manager, Max campaigns automate many of the decisions that advertisers have traditionally made themselves. Audience targeting, bidding strategies, creative rotation, placement selection and budget allocation are all handled by the system. Once an advertiser opts into a Max campaign, Reddit’s software determines where ads appear across the platform, which users see which creative, and how spend is distributed.

Rather than relying on fixed inputs set at the start of a campaign, the system continuously evaluates signals from across Reddit. Those signals are derived from user activity — posts, comments and engagement patterns — which are translated into structured data through the company’s Community Intelligence technology.

Reddit is also pairing Max campaigns with optional, AI-assisted creative tools. During setup, advertisers can receive headline suggestions informed by language patterns that are common in Reddit discussions, generated from live conversational signals rather than static keyword lists. The system can also automatically adapt existing images into thumbnails designed to fit Reddit’s discussion-driven ad formats. The company said it plans to add AI-based video cropping, allowing advertisers to repurpose videos from other platforms for Reddit placements.

Alongside automation, Reddit is introducing a new reporting feature called Top Audience Personas, available exclusively to Max campaigns. Using AI, the tool groups users who see or interact with an ad into distinct personas, giving advertisers insight into which audience segments are engaging most with a campaign and what topics those groups are currently discussing on Reddit. The company said the reporting feature will begin rolling out in the coming weeks.

Reddit’s move mirrors a broader shift across the digital advertising industry toward greater automation. Google and Meta have both pushed aggressively in this direction, expanding products like Performance Max and Advantage+, which automate media buying, creative optimization and audience modeling across their platforms.

With Max campaigns, Reddit is applying similar principles, but anchoring them in the unique signals generated by its communities. The company is betting that the texture of conversation — the debates, questions and obsessions that play out daily across subreddits — can be translated into an automated advertising engine that rivals those of much larger platforms.