Validation Nation: Why Reddit is Winning in the Age of AI
We live in an era of information abundance. AI can answer almost any question instantly. Search engines deliver endless results. Yet consumers have never been less certain about what to trust.
That's where Reddit believes the next great marketing opportunity lies.
In this episode of The CMO Show, Mark Jones sits down with Hayley Saddleton, Country Lead of Business Marketing for Reddit ANZ, to unpack the rise of the "validation economy": a world where people discover through algorithms but make decisions through human reassurance. As AI-generated answers become ubiquitous, consumers are increasingly turning to communities to validate what they've found, seeking lived experience, honest opinions and unfiltered feedback before making choices.
For marketers, this shift presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Reddit has become one of the internet's most influential sources of human conversation, powering everything from purchasing decisions to AI training data. But unlike traditional social platforms, the community can't be manipulated with polished messaging or corporate spin. As Hayley explains, Reddit users can "smell a brand" instantly, forcing marketers to rethink how they show up in conversations and what value they genuinely provide.
The discussion explores why authenticity is becoming a commercial advantage, how anonymous communities often produce richer consumer insights than identity-driven platforms, and why marketers should pay as much attention to criticism and disagreement as they do to positive sentiment. Hayley argues that downvotes, debate and community scrutiny can reveal the relevance gaps brands often miss in traditional research.
You'll also hear how brands such as Škoda and Kia have used Reddit conversations to shape campaigns, product positioning and creative strategy, proving that some of the most valuable insights aren't found in focus groups but in the conversations customers are already having.
For CMOs navigating AI disruption, fragmented attention spans and declining trust, this episode offers a powerful reminder: information is no longer the scarce resource. Confidence is. The brands that help consumers validate decisions, reduce uncertainty and add genuine value will be the ones that win in the validation economy.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Niall Hughes, Kirsten Bables, Syd Le, and audio engineer Ed Cheng. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones:
Word of mouth is an idea in marketing that's more than 100 years old. But it's always been the one thing we can't control. So what happens in the age of AI when word of mouth, this thing we can't control, becomes the only thing that counts?
Hello and welcome to the CMO show. My name is Mark Jones. Great to have you with us. The CMO show is, of course, brought to you by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe. My guest today is Hayley Saddleton. She is the country lead for marketing at Reddit here in Australia. It's the first role of its type at Reddit, and we sat down to talk about all things Reddit in marketing. A couple of things we spoke about the validation economy. We spoke about the number of marketers on Reddit that are not on LinkedIn, which is interesting, and the number of decision makers that are not on LinkedIn, but they are on Reddit. We also talked about the way the community works and why this brand is so important, why it's really having its moment in the sun, so to speak. Because of course, everybody relies on two main things for their stream of consciousness that comes out of these LLMs. The LLMs are going to read it, of course, they're going to YouTube, and these are the main sources of human input that makes our experience with AI as rich as it is. So, lots of things to talk about, a really great conversation. Let's get into it.
Mark Jones:
Hayley, thanks for joining us.
Hayley Saddleton:
Hey, of course.
Mark Jones:
Firstly, what's your role? Tell me about your job here.
Hayley Saddleton:
Yes. I am the country lead of business marketing for Reddit, Australia and New Zealand. I have been here, I want to say eight or nine months my role is the first of its kind in Australia. It's basically to package up the story of Reddit in a way that's going to resonate with our marketers and get people-
Mark Jones:
For businesses.
Hayley Saddleton:
For businesses and for getting people to believe in the platform, which is why I joined.
Mark Jones:
So tell me about the difference between the consumer audience and the business audience and how does that work because that's probably what most people are thinking straight away?
Hayley Saddleton:
100%. Look, well, the reality is that they are the same audience. Your consumers are your business decision-makers and vice versa. I think it's just the objectives become a little different. I think, in the advertising space, the marketing space, "Are we going to grow their business? Are we going to grow their brand? Do we have the credentials, the right products and solutions that actually they can take to their CEO and say, 'Yup, Reddit fits the bill'?" That's my role, but then on the consumer side, it does go hand in hand. So we have to make the platform really palatable, interesting.
We do find that, when we have advertising leaders and execs who are on Reddit, they just get it more. So my job, yes, is in one side, speaking to the industry around why Reddit deserves a spot in your media plan, but the other side is really getting you familiar with Reddit. It's a big, big challenge. Yeah.
Mark Jones:
So then let's dive into the first big thing that I was keen to chat with you about today, of course, which is LLMs. And I really genuinely feel ... And by the way, this is the second time we've had Reddit on The CMO Show, so welcome to the club. Yeah, it's very exclusive. The thing about LLMs is that they, of course, as we all know, rely on Reddit and also YouTube. And I'm interested to know from your perspective what that's like because there's a bit of pressure that comes with that. There's an editorial community that in my view is sacrosanct. It's like, "We've got to look after these people and we've got to try not to let them ..." I'm going to say polluted, but it's probably not the right word.
Hayley Saddleton:
I know what you mean. Yeah.
Mark Jones:
But it's the commercial side that could actually upset the vibe.
Hayley Saddleton:
Oh, completely.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. So tell me about that.
Hayley Saddleton:
Completely understand.
Mark Jones:
What's it like with this ... I feel like it's a moment in the sun where everyone's like, "Hang in a minute. LLMs are training on Reddit," what's that like?
Hayley Saddleton:
Well, look, the reality is Reddit is actually a 21-year-old business, and 21 years ago, you say LLM to someone, they'd be like, "What's that?" And so we were never ever built for this LLM world, but what's been so fascinating is the value of the information and the value of the conversations on Reddit has just become increasingly, increasingly more valuable. And I think one part of that is obviously AI. but the other part is that we are in the information era. We just have so much information around us.
And I think, whilst technology and information is really quick to change and evolve, human nature doesn't. And so people always want to go to other people to talk, to validate, to hear and share their lived experience. And so that's why Reddit data has always been really influential for just teaching humans how to human. And now of course, machines want to get their hands on it. Of course, they need that implicit information that they're not getting from any other sources. And so it's a really interesting time for Reddit because we were never built for this world, but we are now helping prop it up in a way.
But I will say this, I think the Reddit community, if you're familiar with any of the subreddits, are very ... They can smell a brand. They can smell an advertiser and they can smell if someone is hacking the system to appear in an LLM. And so at the end of the day, anyone who's wanting to explore Reddit and understand how they can influence AI discovery, you just need to create for the human. You cannot forget that people are on Reddit to learn how to navigate life. They must be pretty sticky if they've been around for 20 years because the new go-to is obviously an LLM. It used to be you'd go to Google, and of course, that's Google's existential challenge. We can deal with that in another time. But the issue is that people would still go to Reddit as their first or second port of call for information. So how do you maintain that?
Hayley Saddleton:
Well, we're actually seeing some new research out of a company in the States called Profound, which actually shows that, when people are given an LLM response or an output, they still do go to places like Reddit to validate it. And so I think, as long as those spaces are still rich and humming and there's enough incentive for people to keep using them, it will forever be a point of call, a sense check, a reality check for people making all different kinds of decisions, whether they are commercial or whether they are personal or what have you.
Mark Jones:
And what about on the business side? So a lot of our audience are also in enterprise or B2B, so complicated things. Is that okay?
Hayley Saddleton:
Yes, of course. So we actually ran a recent piece of research with HubSpot and it was titled The Hidden B2B Journey: What are the Decisions that are Actually Being Made? We actually found that 60% of Reddit users who have a business or they're a business leader, they actually don't go to other platforms that I cannot say, but it rhymes with inked win. They're not on those platforms, which is really interesting, right? So we unpacked that further. We were like, "Why do we have all these key decision-makers in B2B space?"
Mark Jones:
"Hiding in Reddit."
Hayley Saddleton:
"Hiding in Reddit." It's because, okay, you can say, are certain CRM platforms worth the investment? What was the aftersales support like?" And so at the end of the day, marketing budgets, marketing leaders, they're under constant scrutiny. Why wouldn't you want to go to an unfiltered community to actually ask, "Are the decisions you're making going to make you look stupid or not?" And so I think that's why spaces like Reddit in the B2B sense are becoming a little bit more, I guess, valuable because it is unfiltered. It's not performative. It's not identity driven, which is inked win and other platforms as well.
Mark Jones:
Yes. I did get it, by the way.
Hayley Saddleton:
I know.
Mark Jones:
Okay. So how do you preserve the integrity of that community given how valuable it is.
Hayley Saddleton:
Great question. Reddit has a really interesting checks-and-balances system where we've got these things called Reddit moderators where they're genuine people. Actually, when I joined, I was like, "This isn't a real role," but no, they're real people.
Mark Jones:
They're volunteers?
Hayley Saddleton:
They're volunteers. They dedicate their time because they're just so passionate about certain topics.
Mark Jones:
Like Wikipedia.
Hayley Saddleton:
Literally like a Wikipedia live. And so brands can interact with Reddit moderators to understand, "Okay, what kind of topics or themes can I bring to this community?" because they really are the gatekeepers of making sure things stay on topic. For example, this is really simple, but if you have like a subreddit on cats, dogs aren't allowed, that kind of thing. We need to keep it on topic. And of course, we've got brand safety and suitability teams in the background, making sure things are safe and welcoming for everybody on the platform. But there are so many different layers to Reddit communities and there's, I guess, how you can show up that are different from other platforms.
So your Reddit moderators is one part. There's all this upvoting and downvoting mechanic that we've got, which I think a lot of marketers that I've spoken to since joining Reddit have said, "Look, is that like and dislike?" It actually isn't. It's not like for like on a Facebook like versus a Reddit like or upvote.
Mark Jones:
Well, it's a measure of authenticity, right?
Hayley Saddleton:
Exactly. It's a measure of authenticity.
Mark Jones:
Or accuracy?
Hayley Saddleton:
Accuracy, authenticity, relevancy. It gives you a marker of how people are feeling. Now, downvotes are just as valuable as upvotes, just as valuable.
Mark Jones:
In what way?
Hayley Saddleton:
Because you can understand. So say if someone's saying, "Look," if something's off-topic or if someone says something that's not factual, it's a really good indicator to go, "Okay, right. As a brand, we can't stay in this space," or, "As a consumer, maybe I need to look elsewhere," but also that content actually doesn't get surfaced. So the more upvotes is where you get more content to be surfaced.
Mark Jones:
Do you reckon enough marketers do research on the downvotes?
Hayley Saddleton:
No, I don't think they do. I think it's ... Because on the surface, it could seem scary, right? You don't want to... It's almost like-
Mark Jones:
But it's the gap, isn't it? It's showing you the gap between what people like and don't like.
Hayley Saddleton:
100%. It's the relevancy gap. It's honestly a gap that I think marketers can't ignore,
Hayley Saddleton:
So historically, word of mouth has been the most influential channel when it comes to decisions being made, products-
Mark Jones:
Yes, of course.
Hayley Saddleton:
... being chosen, right? Whereas now Reddit represents that digital modern evolution of word of mouth.
Mark Jones:
At scale.
Hayley Saddleton:
And at scale and you've got brands that are like leaning right in. So we've got Skoda who it's one of my most favourite, favourite things to come out of Reddit. The campaign was called Skoda Octavia, My Lord and Saviour or Our Lord and Saviour, and that was actually a nickname given from the Reddit community to this Skoda model so that was a brand that's gone, "Okay, I'm listening to the community. I'm actually going to call and title my new campaign based off comments from the Reddit community. I'm actually going to let the Reddit community test drive the car for the first time." So that's really interesting.
So you've got brands that are leaning right in, but then you've got brands that are like, "You know what? Comments off. I don't want to hear the conversation," or it's not that they don't want to hear, it's maybe they can't afford to listen to it just yet.
Mark Jones:
So how do you deal with brands that want to treat the platform as an advertising tick box where I tick the box to put some money in, "Here's a bucket of money and we're going to put it in there and we're going to drive them all to our website"? And I'm using that as a simplistic thinking kind of audience. How do you deal with that? Because that's obviously what you're dealing with. You told me that people have been sliding into your LinkedIn-
Hayley Saddleton:
LinkedIn DMs.
Mark Jones:
Yeah.
Hayley Saddleton:
100% because it's similar to my time at TikTok where it's like the new kid on the block, people need to understand, but it's almost like it's a new channel. It's competing with your ... Say a marketer's time is media is what, 5%? We have to make it easy for advertisers to advertise. We have to make it easy for people to understand the platform. So we've been slowly but surely putting the right platforms and solutions in place to ensure that advertisers can get a really good sense check of the community before activating.
Mark Jones:
Is it easy to buy ads for it?
Hayley Saddleton:
It is easy to buy ads. I'd say where the challenge is for marketers is leading into the insights from conversation.
So you just need to be sympathetic to the medium. Like any other platform, you wouldn't put a television out on outdoor. It's understanding that it's a new channel, yes, but it's a complimentary channel that can add value to your media platform.
Mark Jones:
Do you think media buyers, media agencies would just find that a bit complex like, "Oh, that means it's nuanced. Oh, is that going to be hard, we've got to tweak our campaign in too many different ways?" How does that work?
Hayley Saddleton:
I would argue, coming from media agencies myself-
Mark Jones:
Yes, which is partly why I asked.
Hayley Saddleton:
Yeah. I would argue that, from an agency background, you shouldn't be ignoring things that you do that can bring new value to your clients. I personally think it is easy because any good agency strategist or planner or investment lead would understand that there's laws of physics, there's laws of marketing. There is a rule book that you need to adhere to when building a media plan. You wouldn't send your soccer players on the field without knowing the rules of the game. That's the same with any channel. And one of those big guiding principles is being sympathetic to the medium. And so as long as you know how to drive value in each of these channels, Reddit is just another one of those channels where you understand, "Okay, is it some of the language that I need to use in the advertorial piece or is it do I dial up video or do I dial up text given the nature of the platform?"
Like for example, I've just come from TikTok where a lot of it was about that first three seconds. It's like, "Okay, let's create the most captivating ad for you possible because attention is scarce and fleeting." Reddit is the antithesis because people come to the platform to read. One of our top-performing ad formats is actually a free format, which is 40,000 characters long. And I can be honest, when I first heard about this-
Mark Jones:
Who is that?
Hayley Saddleton:
Redditors. Redditors. The average dwell time of a recent Kia case study that we had with freeform was a minute and a half. Can you imagine?
Mark Jones:
That's an eternity online.
Hayley Saddleton:
100%, but because it was adding value. So I'll talk through what Kia did. They basically listened to the community. It was a new model that they were releasing like it was a Tasman instead of doing that big polished TVC where it's predictable, but they do have a role and they still do have a role. The big beautiful TVC of the winding roads and it's a ute for tradies, so we're going into some puddles, we're in the outback. Instead of doing that, they listened to the communities on Reddit, understood the conversations and the debates and the discussions that tradies were having around vehicles, but also the adjacent categories.
Mark Jones:
Interesting.
Hayley Saddleton:
And created ... And basically answered all of their questions in a free format saying, "Hey, we hear you." And it's one of our best-performing free formats we've ever had.
They're just answering people's genuine questions and I think that's really interesting. So that's creating for the platform. Now, yes, is it something new that say creatives and agency folk have to learn? Yes, but it's just like any other platform. TV wasn't always around, radio wasn't always around. You're learning, it's the same process and it will happen again with more platforms that come in the future.
Mark Jones:
What's Hayley's top five, if you will, tips for marketers looking to have their cake and eat it, they want to be in LLMs, but they want to use Reddit in a current relevant way? Because I think, as we've touched on before we press go on the cameras was the need for authenticity is at an all-time high, but our attention spans are pretty much zero.
Hayley Saddleton:
Oh my gosh, yeah, it's completely zapped. I think, okay, for brands in this day and age, we need to be adding value. I say we as obviously I represent Reddit as a brand as well.
Mark Jones:
Of course.
Hayley Saddleton:
You need to be adding value. There needs to be an exchange. I think 25 years ago, the internet was all about, "Okay, how can we give you information?" Now it's, "Hey, internet, help me trust this information. There's too much of it." And so brands, almost the role of brands is to simplify but also add value back, be helpful, be useful, be entertaining. There was recent amazing research that was released by Amplified and Omnicom here locally around the Cost of dull Down Under. And they were saying there was 80% of spend is going towards dull ads. There's this big gap in between. And so I genuinely ... Look, I don't want to oversimplify it, but I genuinely believe it's because we're not adding value. We're not understanding the consumer enough and that relevancy gap between brand and consumer because of the information there is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. I also think we're not brave enough. We're too scared. The risks are too high, culturally speaking. We think we're laissez-faire, but we're actually and that we're out there, but most brands don't want to do crazy stuff or funny stuff.
Hayley Saddleton:
And you know what? That's really interesting and I think that perfectly illustrates the relevancy gap point that I just made, is Australia has one of the highest usage rates of Reddit users-
Mark Jones:
And why do you think this?
Hayley Saddleton:
... globally.
Mark Jones:
Because we're so conservative?
Hayley Saddleton:
I think we love yapping. I generally think we love to yarn. I generally think we love solving problems for each other and I think it's just because we are so vastly spread out on this big island of ours, we want to feel connected, but our advertising, there's still that disconnect. There's still 80% being spent in dollars. So for me, there's a massive untapped resource for marketers to be like, "Okay, what do Australians actually think? What are their actual experiences and how can I use that to make my ads better, to make them more valuable?" I think it really is this nucleus of insight that marketers aren't tapping enough.
Mark Jones:
That unmentioned, but we're going to mention it again, company LinkedIn, one of the differences between that platform and yours is the anonymous thing, right?
Hayley Saddleton:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
Is there a future where Reddit might be ... What's the opposite of anonymous?
Hayley Saddleton:
Identity driven.
Mark Jones:
Identity driven, yeah.
Hayley Saddleton:
Well, I can't answer that entirely, but from my perspective, no.
Mark Jones:
You can't see it.
Hayley Saddleton:
I can't see it. Like, when I first joined Reddit, I just thought, "What a beautiful contradiction it being anonymous is." Because on one side, coming from... I actually come from an era, whilst I'm not that old, I definitely was around when brands were so scared of UGC, so scared of user-generated content to the point where platforms like Reddit would not be considered. But now, we're in an era where ideas from the community are so valuable that they're informing Super Bowl ads. They're informing brands like Skoda and how they release new car models. And I think the anonymous nature of Reddit has allowed people to not perform or broadcast, but to genuinely share their opinion and share an unfiltered opinion.
Now, unfiltered can be a red flag for some brands, but for those who learn from it and lean into it, I think it can be an amazing piece of toolkit.
Mark Jones:
Tell me about this other economy you wanted to talk about.
Hayley Saddleton:
So yes, something I'm very excited about, which is the validation economy because we're living in an era where there's so much explicit information available to us at all times. You've got your LLMs giving you a zero-click experience, information abundance, but that abundance hasn't necessarily created confidence. In fact, I think it's done the complete opposite because when decisions really matter, you want to go and validate with someone else. Whether that's, "Hey, is Bali worth going to at this time of year?" or, "Hey, I want to buy this pram. Will it fit in my Honda Civic?"
I don't know why Honda Civic is top of mind, but just these little lived experience moments which are becoming a hell of a lot more important. And I think validation, not just in a consumer purchase perspective, but just in general. So we see people coming to Reddit all the time being like, "Is this film worth watching? I haven't seen Brad Pitt lately. Has anyone got any intel?" It's validation in a more broader sense as well.
Mark Jones:
So from the marketing funnel perspective, that's the consideration stage. So what's different?
Hayley Saddleton:
So I would argue that there's validation layers all through the funnel. "Where to go on holiday? Okay, I've landed on a place. Is it good for kids?" middle funnel and through the purchase, "Is it worth the money?" So we're starting to prove this out internally at Reddit at the moment, but there's validation questions to be answered all through the funnel because Reddit is a full-funnel platform. We've had brands that have seen such success upper funnel, lower funnel, and now as we're growing more in Australia, we're getting a hell of a lot more appetite for full funnel pieces.
And so originally when I started at Reddit, I was like, "You know what? I think consideration is where ..." Obviously there's a hell of a lot of discussion online, which gives us the signal of consideration, but we're going and looking deeper now and finding that it's through all facets because any topic or any decision that gets made, there's usually something that needs to be validated beforehand.
Mark Jones:
Connect the dots for me then. What's the economy part of the validation economy bit? In other words, how do you make money out of this? Where is it useful to marketers?
Hayley Saddleton:
It's a complimentary channel because what we're seeing is people will discover, say in a TikTok or another platform, they will validate with Reddit. And so it has to be a complimentary medium where it's basically covering explicit and implicit. And I think advertising doesn't do this enough where too often we get caught up in the explicit, "So these are the facts and features, this is the price," but we all know price is a feeling. So you need to dovetail that with implicit spaces.
Mark Jones:
How hard is it to measure the validation economy?
Hayley Saddleton:
Well, hey, that's the age-on question. Well, we're really lucky to be operating on par with some of our competitors in terms of marketing science, but we also are learning through our advertisers and partners that, whether through its MMM or whether it's through even just your simple brand lift studies and conversion lift, it just depends on what your objective is in your campaign. But no, we see that Reddit performs really well all through the funnel.
Mark Jones:
Now you said you're pretty new here, but you have been travelling a bit. I would normally ask a question to say, what's the next 20 years of Reddit look like? You can't speak to all of that, but can you give us any juicy insights?
Hayley Saddleton:
I think, from my perspective, at least from a local perspective in Australia, whilst the brand is 21 years old I think it's just building literacy with the platform. So actually, what is Reddit? Because we ask so many ... Some of my friends, my parents included and they're like, "I think I know what it is." And so there's a lot more education more generally with the consumer that we need to be doing, especially on a local level. But look, the future is bright. I can't say too much around what our big rocks are, but there's some interesting things in the work, Mark.
Mark Jones:
Are there people like you in other countries then? Is this a global thing, right?
Hayley Saddleton:
Yes. Yeah. I'm the last, I guess, country lead to be hired. So Australia,
Mark Jones:
Do you and all your country leads have a private Reddit thread or-
Hayley Saddleton:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
You do?
Hayley Saddleton:
Yeah, we do. We do. Actually, there was an event we ran this week that ended up on Reddit. We had Snoo, which is our mascot, which you can see behind me, just out on the street. And of course, the redditors were just like, "What the hell is happening on Russell Street in Melbourne?" And so yeah, our B2B world is blurring with the consumer world, which is really fun.
Mark Jones:
Hayley, thank you so much for being our guest on the show. We're going to leave it there, but I really appreciate all of the insights you brought to the literal table. Thank you.
Hayley Saddleton:
No worries. Thank you so much for having me. It's been awesome.