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Image Credit: State of Brand

Growth & Strategy

Reddit Was the AI Visibility Playbook. Now It Wants a Login.

Q: What is State of Brand?

State of Brand is a trade publication covering brand strategy and category positioning for CMOs, brand strategists and marketing leaders. We report on the ideas, people and developments shaping brand strategy, category positioning, and how brands hold meaning as media fragments, with a particular focus on perspectives from the executives, operators and subject matter experts doing the work firsthand. Our readership is global and includes professionals at Fortune 500 companies and leading organizations across brand and marketing. Our goal is to give practitioners a useful place to learn from their peers and give experts a credible platform to contribute their experience to important industry conversations.

Q: Who do you interview, and why was I invited?

We regularly speak with senior executives, operators, practitioners, researchers and other subject matter experts whose experience is relevant to the topics we cover. Our editorial team proactively identifies potential contributors based on their professional expertise, experience and perspective. You do not need to be a customer of, partner to, or otherwise affiliated with any company to participate. Interviews are designed to surface useful firsthand perspectives rather than promote a product or company. For participants, they provide an opportunity to contribute to the conversation around their field, share lessons from their work, and build a published body of thought leadership around the subjects they know best. There is no fee to participate.

Q: Who publishes State of Brand?

State of Brand is published by Outlever, which produces it as one of its own media properties rather than on behalf of an outside sponsor. The articles and interviews are produced by the State of Brand editorial team. Experts are invited because their perspectives are relevant to our coverage, not because they have paid to appear. An interview invitation from State of Brand should therefore be understood as an invitation to contribute expertise to an editorial trade publication — not as a sales solicitation or paid placement.

Q: Where will my interview appear, and who will see it?

Your interview will be published on State of Brand, where it becomes part of our ongoing coverage of brand strategy and category positioning and can continue to be discovered and referenced after publication. Our audience includes CMOs, brand strategists and marketing leaders at organizations around the world, including professionals at Fortune 500 companies and other leading enterprises. We also make interviews easy to extend through professional networks. Contributors receive a shareable article link and professionally designed quote-card asset that can be used on LinkedIn, and stories may receive additional amplification through the publication, contributor networks and relevant professional communities. For many contributors, the value is not simply appearing in one article. It is having their expertise captured in a credible editorial format that can be shared with colleagues, customers, peers and their broader professional network.

Reddit plans to put its threads behind a login, which weakens one of the most common ways B2B brands get cited in AI answers.

ByState of Brand Editorial

Nov 2, 2026

Reddit will start testing a login requirement in select markets outside the US this quarter, after Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews cut into its search traffic. CEO Steve Huffman told investors AI Mode sends almost no traffic to anyone, and said logins will help protect Reddit's data from scrapers.

If your AI visibility plan includes getting your brand mentioned in Reddit threads, Reddit's third-quarter results are worth a close read.

Huffman wrote in his shareholder letter on Thursday that Reddit is shifting to a "logged-in-only experience," Engadget reported. For most of its 21 years, anyone could read the site without an account. Reddit will test the requirement in select markets outside the US during the fourth quarter.

Reddit is making the change largely because of falling traffic from Google. Search referrals dropped by more than 1 million a week on average in October, Reuters reported, and Huffman warned that daily active uniques could fall by a low-double-digit percentage this quarter, from about 130 million, if the decline continues. Reddit's shares fell 18% in after-hours trading.

Huffman blamed AI Mode and AI Overviews, which answer questions on the results page itself. On the earnings call, he said Google is crawling Reddit as hard as it ever has, and that "AI Mode does not drive traffic. Not for us, and not to anybody," as TNW reported.

Reddit was the centerpiece of most AI visibility advice

Over the past year, agencies selling AEO and GEO services have routinely told B2B brands to show up on Reddit, and the citation data backed them up. Peec AI's analysis of 30 million sources cited by ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews ranked Reddit as the most-cited domain. Semrush found Reddit in about 40% of AI-generated answers, ahead of Wikipedia and YouTube, according to DesignRush.

In September we wrote that AI engines barely use brand websites when they describe a company, and community threads were among the third-party sources we pointed to. Reddit was the easiest of those for a marketing team to influence, since getting a trade reporter to cover your company can take months and anyone on staff can answer a question in a subreddit today.

Logins will limit which AI engines can read Reddit

According to Huffman, most of the scraping of Reddit's data happens through logged-out browsing. He listed protecting that data as one of three reasons for the change, along with a better experience for logged-in users and new regulations around the world.

Reddit licenses its data to Google and OpenAI, so the login requirement is aimed at companies that collect it without paying. Reddit has sued Anthropic, Perplexity and three data-scraping firms over how they gathered its content, according to Reuters. In markets where the login applies, engines without a licensing deal will have less Reddit material to draw on.

For brands, this means a helpful thread about their product will mostly reach AI engines that have an agreement with Reddit, on whatever terms Reddit negotiates. Until now, almost any engine that crawled the open web could pick it up. Even Google's access is unresolved. COO Jen Wong told Bloomberg the renewal talks are complicated and that ending the partnership is a possible outcome, TNW reported.

Reddit hasn't decided how much of the site will stay open. Huffman said the front page should remain visible without an account, and visitors arriving from search or a shared link should still see the post they were sent to. Reddit threads will keep showing up in AI answers this quarter, but Reddit will be deciding which engines can read them, and it expects to be paid for that access.

Google's AI features are cutting traffic well beyond Reddit

Alphabet's results last week pointed to the same problem. Google reported its fastest query growth in five years and its slowest search revenue growth of the year, as we covered at the time. When Google answers a question at the top of the page, fewer people click through to Reddit, publishers or B2B vendors.

Reddit has two ways to respond that most companies don't. It can push casual readers to log in, and logged-in users already account for more than 80% of its monetization, according to Reuters. It can also charge AI companies to read content that used to be free. A B2B brand has neither option with Google, so the sources it relies on for AI visibility need to be ones it can count on staying open.

Our take

At State of Brand, we think B2B marketers should cut back on how much of their AI visibility plan depends on Reddit and other third-party forums.

Reddit has never run the site for brand marketers, and it can change who gets to read it whenever its business calls for that, as it did last week.

Brands should keep answering questions in the subreddits where their buyers already spend time. Useful answers from named employees still help logged-in users, who are the audience Reddit is now building around. Brands should stop judging those programs by how often the threads turn up in AI answers, though, since Reddit and its licensing partners will control that from now on.

More of the budget should go to sources that don't sit behind one platform's login, including trade press coverage, original research, customers speaking on the record and a publication of your own covering your category. Our 2027 B2B playbook cited a Search Engine Land study that found 52.2% of AI-cited passages contained original or owned data.

It also makes sense to check where your AI citations come from today. If a large share of the answers that mention your brand rely on Reddit threads, run the same prompts every month and see what changes as Reddit expands the test. After ChatGPT's tracking bug, we noted that marketers control very little of how AI search is measured, so a baseline taken now will help when the numbers start to move.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is State of Brand?

State of Brand is a trade publication covering brand strategy and category positioning for CMOs, brand strategists and marketing leaders.

We report on the ideas, people and developments shaping brand strategy, category positioning, and how brands hold meaning as media fragments, with a particular focus on perspectives from the executives, operators and subject matter experts doing the work firsthand.

Our readership is global and includes professionals at Fortune 500 companies and leading organizations across brand and marketing. Our goal is to give practitioners a useful place to learn from their peers and give experts a credible platform to contribute their experience to important industry conversations.

Who do you interview, and why was I invited?

We regularly speak with senior executives, operators, practitioners, researchers and other subject matter experts whose experience is relevant to the topics we cover.

Our editorial team proactively identifies potential contributors based on their professional expertise, experience and perspective. You do not need to be a customer of, partner to, or otherwise affiliated with any company to participate.

Interviews are designed to surface useful firsthand perspectives rather than promote a product or company. For participants, they provide an opportunity to contribute to the conversation around their field, share lessons from their work, and build a published body of thought leadership around the subjects they know best.

There is no fee to participate.

Who publishes State of Brand?

State of Brand is published by Outlever, which produces it as one of its own media properties rather than on behalf of an outside sponsor.

The articles and interviews are produced by the State of Brand editorial team. Experts are invited because their perspectives are relevant to our coverage, not because they have paid to appear.

An interview invitation from State of Brand should therefore be understood as an invitation to contribute expertise to an editorial trade publication — not as a sales solicitation or paid placement.

Does it cost anything to be interviewed or featured?

No. There is no fee to participate in an interview or to be featured in State of Brand.

We do not charge executives, subject matter experts, or their companies for editorial coverage. There are no placement fees, participation fees, required subscriptions, or other payments associated with being interviewed or included in an editorial feature.

Our editorial team invites contributors because their experience, expertise, or perspective is relevant to the subjects we cover — not because they have paid for exposure.

State of Brand is published by Outlever, which allows the publication to produce ongoing reporting and interviews without charging the experts who contribute to our coverage.

Participation also does not require you or your organization to purchase anything from, become a customer of, or enter into a commercial relationship with anyone.

If you have been invited to speak with State of Brand, the invitation is for an editorial interview at no cost to you or your organization.

What should I expect if I agree to an interview?

The process is intentionally straightforward.

A member of the State of Brand editorial team will conduct a brief conversation, typically around 20 minutes, focused on the subject where your experience is most relevant. We then develop the conversation into an editorial feature for the publication.

Before publication, participants are given an opportunity to review the article and flag factual inaccuracies, quotation issues or important context that should be clarified.

Our goal is to accurately represent your perspective while keeping the process lightweight for busy executives and subject matter experts.

Where will my interview appear, and who will see it?

Your interview will be published on State of Brand, where it becomes part of our ongoing coverage of brand strategy and category positioning and can continue to be discovered and referenced after publication.

Our audience includes CMOs, brand strategists and marketing leaders at organizations around the world, including professionals at Fortune 500 companies and other leading enterprises.

We also make interviews easy to extend through professional networks. Contributors receive a shareable article link and professionally designed quote-card asset that can be used on LinkedIn, and stories may receive additional amplification through the publication, contributor networks and relevant professional communities.

For many contributors, the value is not simply appearing in one article. It is having their expertise captured in a credible editorial format that can be shared with colleagues, customers, peers and their broader professional network.

Reddit was the centerpiece of most AI visibility advice

Logins will limit which AI engines can read Reddit

Google's AI features are cutting traffic well beyond Reddit

Our take

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Frequently Asked Questions