Reddit says it now gets 1.4B native video views per month and serves 13M+ hours of video monthly, up 38% since the beginning of 2018
Context & Ripple Effects
Reddit has been assembling this stack for years: a video division for original content in 2015, then native uploads of up to 15 minutes in 2017, then its own player. Two months ago the player crossed 1B monthly views and more than half of all video views on the site; at 1.4B and 13M+ hours served, the growth since the start of 2018 is compounding rather than plateauing.
First-order effects
- Reddit's own player, already serving over 50% of site video views as of October, now captures the majority of watch time that previously leaked to embedded YouTube or Imgur players — keeping session data and ad inventory on-platform.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers gain native video units inside communities where they previously bought only display, putting pressure on the third-party hosts Reddit used to route around for reach and pricing.
Third-order effects
- If owned-video infrastructure keeps scaling with audience — Reddit later disclosed 52M DAUs and $100M+ ad revenue in 2019 — community platforms structurally shift from link aggregators into first-party media businesses competing for the same video ad budgets as social networks.
The trend: Community platforms are building owned video pipelines to convert user-generated discussion time into first-party ad inventory instead of renting reach from external hosts.