When it first launched in 2006, BuzzFeed was a trailblazer, creating from scratch a playbook for sparking virality within the early days of the social web.
Now, following its Monday acquisition by media govt Byron Allen, the model and its sister property, HuffPost, have educated their give attention to the most recent battleground within the consideration wars: the lounge.
“As of this moment, BuzzFeed is officially chasing YouTube and the other big tech platforms,” Allen instructed The New York Times.
BuzzFeed is hardly alone on this pivot. Structural forces are threatening the sturdiness of the open web, with reply engines siphoning visitors away from web sites and customers more and more gravitating towards cell apps and walled gardens.
In response, media manufacturers have adopted an more and more distributed method, cultivating audiences throughout channels together with newsletters, podcasts, and reside occasions. But one channel specifically seems poised for explosive progress: streaming tv.
After years of deliberate growth, streaming surpassed cable in whole viewership in 2024, in response to Nielsen. Its share of whole tv advert spend has gone from 15% in 2020 to 38% in 2025, with the crossover projected for 2027-2028, in response to Adwave.
And whereas the streaming wars of the early pandemic centered largely on subscription-based merchandise from the likes of Netflix, Disney, and Prime Video, the only largest participant within the area for the final three years working is YouTube. The free, ad-supported platform captured 12.7% of all viewing in February—up from 7.9% in February 2023.
The platform, which has lengthy been engaging to creators, is now more and more drawing the eye of main media manufacturers, as its accessibility, highly effective algorithm, and easy monetization mannequin make it almost a video enterprise in a field.
For a writer like BuzzFeed, which has already constructed a devoted following on the platform, doubling down on YouTube is a forward-thinking technique. It can deal with the web site as the highest of its content material funnel, attracting viewers there earlier than shepherding them into extra direct relationships, akin to via newsletters, podcasts, and commerce.
In this effort, Allen’s many years of experience in tv and the manufacturing infrastructure he has at hand may show to be helpful tailwinds. The medium may be fully totally different, however the content material itself will not be.