How Reddit can help brands predict future consumer trends—including bug eating and space tourism

Reddit wants brands to peer into the hivemind of its users to predict the future, like when a fast-food restaurant should consider serving insect proteins in value meals or when a beauty brand should offer DNA-based skincare regimens. Reddit released a special report today with these insights for brands as part of its participation at CES in Las Vegas.

The report forecasted when certain trends would gain mainstream appeal, including the interest in eating bugs, which has been one of the hot topics on the site, and when robot partners could finally be available. “We are sitting on one of the greatest repositories of human information that’s ever existed,” said Rob Gaige, Reddit's head of global insights, in a phone interview this week. “It’s true conversations with people in subreddits.”

“If you can mine the insights from that,” Gaige said. “If you can understand what’s motivating people, and spot their changing attitudes and behaviors within those subreddits, it just really helps you connect better as an advertiser.”

This year represents Reddit’s largest activation at CES with a booth opposite Meta at Wynn Las Vegas, which is where many tech companies are setting up shop. CES kicked off today and runs through the weekend. Reddit has been ramping up its involvement at major industry events, including erecting an installation on the beach at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Reddit, like many of its tech peers including TikTok, Pinterest and Spotify, picks up real-time trends based on users’ interests, and it translate those trends into marketing reports for brands.

Reddit has more than 100,000 subreddits, which are communities based around topics, encompassing everything from sports to TV to science. Popular communities cover niche subjects, too, like “anti-work,” a group of people who share horror stories about overbearing bosses. Communities like “anti-work” could be instructive for brands to learn about what motivates Gen Z, Gaige said.

For CES, Reddit scoured subreddits that discuss futuristic technology, and it identified common themes in the conversations. “We wanted to get Redditors’ opinions on how quickly those innovations would be adopted into the mainstream,” Gaige said.

For instance, on the subreddit for entomophagy, people discuss, well, eating insects. Insect protein is viewed as a futuristic cuisine because of its potentially lower impact on the environment compared to mass animal farming. Reddit’s insights team also looked at subreddits that discussed nootropic designer drugs, artificial intelligence and themes like the coming “singularity.” Reddit found that users were discussing concepts like robot companions, lab-grown organs and space tourism.

Reddit then surveyed its communities for a sense of when people think these technologies will go mainstream. By 2025, people predicted a rise in insect-based dieting, metaverse adoption, and AI-generated music. By 2029, Redditors in the “futurology” community expected digestible bots for use in nanomedicines. There will be robot chefs by 2035, and space tourism by 2050, Redditors predicted.

Reddit is using its forecasts as a catalyst to reach marketers at CES. Brands such as L’Oréal, PepsiCo, BMW and Lowe’s are at CES, among others. The conference covers topics ranging from food tech to electric vehicles to AI. Beauty, health and wellness brands could consult Reddit for ideas about products. Food brands could use the data to understand developing tastes.

“There may be innovations that [brands are] sitting on and they’re thinking, ‘Is now the time to launch it, should I move forward with it,’” Gaige said about advising brands with Reddit data. “This might give them a little bit of a radar.”

Reddit shares this type of data with brands as part of advertising relationships, and it creates bespoke reports for different brands to help them plan campaigns on the platform. Reddit also uses the insights to inform its own marketing plan.