New York, January 16, 2026, 05:07 EST — Premarket
- Reddit shares rose roughly 0.8% in premarket, rebounding slightly from Thursday’s 9.4% drop.
- An RBC note highlighted “mixed” reactions from small-business ad checks, but larger competitors appeared to be faring better.
- Reddit scheduled its fourth-quarter and full-year results release for Feb. 5, providing a new near-term catalyst.
Shares of Reddit, Inc. edged up in premarket action on Friday following a steep drop the day before, as investors grappled with renewed concerns over ad demand. The stock last traded around $230.48, a 0.8% gain, after closing down 9.36% at $228.75 on Thursday. 1
The move matters because Reddit’s rally has spotlighted whether it can sustain turning traffic into ad revenue, particularly from smaller brands that scrutinize returns tightly. Any slip in ad performance could quickly dent growth stocks, with the next earnings update now close enough to influence positioning.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Brad Erickson reported that recent feedback from small and medium-sized business (SMB) ad agencies was “more mixed” when it came to Reddit. This contrasted with a stronger environment for major digital ad players like Meta and Alphabet. Erickson noted Reddit’s pricing remains low and generally matches “conversion” rates — the measure of ads leading to actions such as sales or sign-ups — while emphasizing that “much is expected” from the platform. 2
Emplifi announced a new partnership with Reddit to embed Reddit’s Enterprise API into its Emplifi Fuel platform, which the company positions as a social data execution engine for brands. Emplifi CEO Ohad Hecht described the deal as turning “the internet’s largest focus group” into a performance driver. Jonathan Flesher, Reddit’s VP of business development and partnerships, added that brands are eager to close the gap between listening and taking action. 3
Reddit announced it will report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings after the market closes on Thursday, Feb. 5. The company plans to host a conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET that same day. 4
Traders are now weighing if Thursday’s sell-off was just a one-off correction or the beginning of a rough patch ahead of earnings. Attention is zeroed in on ad performance indicators — pricing trends, results from smaller advertisers, and whether fresh tools are boosting the “conversion” metrics that matter most to buyers.
The risk is that ad checks may be signaling a stickier problem: if smaller brands continue to see stronger returns from unpaid, “organic” efforts versus paid ads, revenue growth might end up more uneven than investors expect. Premarket moves can also be misleading; thin liquidity often shifts once the market opens.
The upcoming week is a bit shorter, with U.S. markets shutting down Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 5
