Investors typically look to the financial performance of tech giants like Meta, Alphabet and Amazon for a view of the ad market's overall health, Goldman said. That Reddit's sales grew significantly alongside the bigger players shows that advertisers feel optimistic enough to "diversify to a platform that's more nascent, like Reddit, and say 'We're willing to throw some dollars at this thing that we don't really understand,'" Goldman said.
Media and advertising executives told CNBC in December that they were optimistic about the market and said that ad spending increased in the fourth quarter. That sentiment seemed to be reflected by online ad tech companies' latest quarterly earnings reports, said Gil Luria, head of tech research at investment banking firm D.A. Davidson. He added that "animal spirits are high" following the U.S. presidential election.