Reader's active users, though, tended to be influencers who read a lot and shared what they read with their friends on social media. So they still drove traffic

Reader's active users, though, tended to be influencers who read a lot and shared what they read with their friends on social media. So they still drove traffic, just by a different mechanism. Many of the people I followed on Reader moved to Twitter after Google took it down and mimicked its social functions there. I'd wager they're still either using RSS readers or jury-rigging Twitter into being something like it.