Is Buzzfeed a sinking ship?
Let’s talk about the magnificent establishment and rise of Buzzfeed; the world’s leading independent digital media company” as the company defines itself on its homepage. How it reshaped online media by introducing viral content and taking “native ads” to a whole new level. The two factors I believe behind the success of Buzzfeed and its possible fall too.
“SweatShop” the magical word that ironically and unintentionally inspired the creation of the 1.7-billion-dollar worth company “Buzzfeed” by Jonah Peretti, who was just an average 31 years old American teacher (Lee, 2020). It all started in 2001 when Peretti decided to customize his Nike sneakers by adding the word “Sweatshop”, but the request was rejected by Nike multiple times. The story eventually reached millions of people (Elkins, 2017). This exact moment I believe is when Peretti broke the internet and introduced the concept of going viral.
In 2006, Peretti co-founded Buzzfeed as a side project with one goal; experimenting media freely on the internet. Hence, to understand the science behind sharing content. Eventually, Peretti managed to break-through by using various techniques such as attractive titles (clickbait), random quizzes, cute stories and memes. I myself, learned a lot from these techniques and applied that to my job that’s digital.
Other websites including news publishers began following Buzzfeed’s lead in viral content, along with native advertising. “BuzzFeed has played a big role in expanding the popularity of native advertising” (Elkin, 2016). Native ads usually camouflage well with the content, unlike ad banners that scream the word “advertisement’ which is despised by Buzzfeed (at least in the past).
I believe that native ads and viral content were the keys to Buzzfeed’s success. However, I also believe that the future of Buzzfeed is jeopardized by these two factors due to their un-exclusivity to Buzzfeed.
As shown in the charts below, the reliance on native advertising is gradually decreasing in alliance with Peretti’s vision for the company. Peretti said: “for most of BuzzFeed’s history, almost all our revenue came from native advertising”. (Peretti, 2020)
Along the reduction of native ad usage, the revenues(below) seem to have declined too. Surely, there are other factors such as the growth of Fb and google. That doesn’t mean we can dismiss the fact that Buzzfeed is having a setback.
Buzzfeed attempts to avoid more losses by pushing investments into popular sub-brands such as tasty. Using ad banners is another attempt which was once against Buzzfeed’s principles. I believe these are desperate attempts and won’t stop the revenues from sinking specially with Covid19 epidemic that forced many companies and large ones as well to offer their A game, or else get kicked out of the scene. I believe that Buzzfeed will be doomed unless it comes across a game-changer trick like viral content, or a genius move like it did with native ads. Another possible scenario for the company I think is to get acquired by a bigger company.
“The most important thing is to do what’s right for the company, and if being part of a larger company allowed us to grow our mission, I would be open to that.” Said Peretti. (Lee, 2020)
References:
Elkins, K. (2017, August 03). How a fight with Nike led Buzzfeed’s Jonah Peretti to create a billion-dollar media empire. Retrieved September, from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/02/how-jonah-peretti-created-buzzfeed-a-billion-dollar-media-empire.html
Elkin, T. (2016). BuzzFeed’s Native Ad Leader: Create Content That’s Fun And Doesn’t Trick Readers. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/277057/buzzfeeds-native-ad-leader-create-content-that.html
Peretti, J. (2020, January 03). BuzzFeed In 2020. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/jonah/buzzfeed-in-2020
Lee, E. (2020, January 31). The Future of BuzzFeed: Win or LOL? Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/business/media/buzzfeed-news.html
