Reddit has grown its advertising business with a pair of sales leadership appointments.
David Trencher, who was previously at Reddit’s US office, has been promoted to head of large customer sales for the UK, EMEA and Australia. He will oversee a team of nine people in the UK with plans to grow headcount by 50% by the end of this year.
Before joining Reddit in 2019, Trencher spent more than five years as a senior sales executive at both Spotify and Facebook, including as sales director for Asia-Pacific in 2011 and 2012.
Trencher will be joined by Maria Purcell, who has been appointed head of growth partnerships (mid-market and small-medium business sales) across the same regions. Purcell was formerly the head of commercial partnerships for EMEA at Facebook and previously worked at Uber.
Reddit has set up a mid-market and UK SMB sales team with 11 people and a further 20 consultants in Lisbon.
The pair will be based in London in an ad sales office that opened a year ago. They will report to Reddit’s global executive vice-president and president of advertising, Harold Klaje.
Other new hires include Susanne Schmid, who joins from Facebook as global agency lead for WPP, and will be the first global holding company lead-based outside of the US; and John Baylon, formerly with Verizon Media, as regional agency lead, EMEA.
The UK, home to 52 million daily Reddit users (in a population of 67.1m), is the platform’s second-largest market outside of the US. In the past year, the UK user base has grown by 48% – with 69% aged 18-34 years old.
UK users spend an average of 31 minutes each day on its app, according to Reddit, and Klaje said it was a “priority market” for the platform.
He continued: “Our newly bolstered team in the UK and EMEA will ensure best-in-class service, strategic solutions and meaningful results for local brands of all sizes and industries – from new start-ups to well-established household names – as they find their home within Reddit’s 100,000-plus communities.”
