Meet the magnificence of shareable advertising with BuzzFeed

Many publishers seem to fear the impact of social media on advertising – but BuzzFeed seems to embrace it? (0:03)

We find – we create our native advertising in the same way that we create our native advertising in the same way that we create our editorial advertising – with the goal of wanting to share it with our friends. And we found that when you read an ad that has been shared with you, you will form an even more favourable view of that brand, than if you’d just consumed it from the site yourself. And that just shows you the power that sharing can have for brands, and using social media for brands. 

Is shortform content best for mobile? (0:29)

I mean we think people really want both. We’ve found that longform content is actually consumed quite a bit on mobile, which was a surprise to us at first. We always thought that people wanted shortform as they browsed their phones in line. But it turns out they’re also hungry to consume some of the more longform content that way too. 

Is it important to you to be seen as providing more serious content? (0:50)

Yeah. It’s definitely important to us. We want to create content for people who are well rounded and want to read about different things. We don’t just want to cater to the side of someone’s personality that’s looking for entertaining content as they stand in line. We want people to look to us for content about politics and telling them, y’know, why certain international stories are relevant. 

Your advertising seems to be quite low key – is this important to maintain editorial integrity? (1:15)

We actually don’t run any banner advertising. We only run our own native advertising that we create in-house. And so it’s extremely native to the site, delivered through the same CMS that we use for our editorial content. So we think it definitely creates a better user experience, and also creates better perception of the brands that we work with. 

How important is it for BuzzFeed to be seen as digital first? (1:36)

That’s one of the reasons why we haven’t done as much, y’know, partnering… is that we’re digital-first and we think that’s a really important part of our identity and our DNA. So we’ve expanded to these other places largely by finding these really talented editors, to grow BuzzFeed from the ground up in these places. 

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