BuzzFeed Stock

BuzzFeed, Inc. (BuzzFeed) operates as a digital media company.

With a portfolio of iconic, globally-loved brands that includes BuzzFeed, Tasty, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News, and Complex Networks, the company is the number one destination for Gen Z and Millennials.

BuzzFeed curates the Internet, and acts as an ‘inspiration engine,’ driving both online and real-world action and transactions. The company’s strong audience signal and powerful content flywheel enable the company to create category-leading brands and a deep, two-way connection with the company’s audiences, as well as high-quality content at massive scale and low cost. Working across platforms allows the company to adapt content from one platform and innovate around new formats to drive engagement on other platforms. This means the company can reach its audiences wherever they are — across the company’s owned and operated properties and the major social platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, and Apple News. In 2022, the company’s audiences consumed more than 620 million hours of content.

With a broad and diverse roster of creative talent and a comprehensive set of creator-focused tools, technology, and resources, the company is a trusted partner to advertisers, helping them execute premium campaigns effectively and efficiently.

Through the company’s proprietary first-party data, its category-leading brands and the company’s comprehensive suite of ad products, the company offers advertisers the tools and contextual alignment needed to effectively and efficiently reach large young audiences without running afoul of emerging data privacy regulations.

As the e-commerce market grows and consumer choice expands, the company is able to provide retailers with an incremental channel for capturing high-quality, actionable consumer traffic.

Brands

The company has built and assembled a portfolio of iconic, category-leading brands for Gen Z and Millennial audiences across food, news, pop culture, and commerce.

The company’s flagship BuzzFeed brand has become a go-to authority for curating entertainment, pop culture, and the Internet. With articles, lists, quizzes, videos, and original series — the company’s audience comes to BuzzFeed to learn what to watch, read, and buy now — and into the future.

The company’s food brand, Tasty, highlights the best of BuzzFeed: shareable content that brings people together on a viral scale. First launched in 2015, Tasty has grown into the largest, most engaged food community on the internet, pioneering the overhead video format that is now ubiquitous across most major food brands.

HuffPost, acquired in February 2021, is a global, Pulitzer Prize-winning media platform for news, politics, opinion, entertainment, features, and lifestyle content. BuzzFeed News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom created in 2012, is widely read, particularly among a younger audience.

In December 2021, BuzzFeed acquired Complex Networks, a global youth entertainment company that drives culture across music, food, style, entertainment, and sports. With brands like First We Feast, Pigeons & Planes, Sole Collector and Complex — as well as live events, led by ComplexCon — Complex Networks has established itself as a leader in time spent among males aged 18 to 34.

Audience

The company’s content reflects the voice of the most diverse generation in history, and creates an ‘inspiration engine’ that helps millions explore new things, try unique experiences, and discover novel products. Across the company’s network of brands, the company reaches millions of monthly viewers, who consumed more than 620 million hours of content and drove hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions in 2022. The company’s cross-platform distribution network gives the company the ability to connect with the Internet generations at a massive scale on whatever platform they are using to consume content. The company attracts and retains audiences as a function of the company’s data driven approach to content creation. As audiences engage with the company’s content, the company captures insights into their preferences and apply those learnings to new content development. This enables the company to attract larger, more engaged audiences and capture deeper, more reliable insights.

Technology Platform and Data-Driven Content Flywheel

The company’s data-driven approach to content creation is designed to benefit all stakeholders across the company’s ecosystem: audiences, creators, advertisers and social platforms.

BuzzFeed began as a lab in New York City, experimenting with content, formats, and distribution on the Internet. The company has established a deep understanding of modern media and developed proprietary technology designed to rapidly scale and monetize digital content. Machine learning and analytics power everything from the company’s scaled tech stack of quiz makers built into a content management system to proprietary algorithms and custom tools for content creators and brand advertisers to headline optimization.

Supported by the company’s highly scalable and repeatable technology platform, the company’s data-driven content flywheel informs its most important decisions, from investment in individual pieces of content to large-scale acquisitions. In tandem, the company’s cross-platform distribution model maximizes audience reach and revenue opportunities. The company’s content and brands are ubiquitous, platform-agnostic, and designed for modern-day consumption patterns, providing engagement behavior data and learnings across the BuzzFeed network. With this distribution strategy driving scale, efficiency, and adaptability, the company captures the interests of its audience, informs the company’s content creators and journalists, helps advertisers reach their target audiences, and provides high-quality brand-safe content to the social platforms.

The company’s differentiated model for content creation and distribution is designed to serve all stakeholders in the company’s ecosystem.

These proprietary tools and technologies ensure the company is serving its audiences compelling, culturally relevant content regardless of platform.

The company’s content creators and journalists also benefit greatly, as internal dashboards and metrics provide heightened visibility on audience interaction, allowing them to focus on content and formats that maximize engagement and revenue.

Similarly, advertisers rely on the company’s audience insights and first-party data tools to optimize their ad campaigns.

The company’s data-driven approach to content creation also resonates with the large social platforms seeking an alternative to user-generated content.

Business Model

Powered by the company’s highly scalable data-driven content flywheel, BuzzFeed has grown into a large scale, global media company that distributes content across owned and operated, as well as third-party, platforms. The company has leveraged its media network to develop a comprehensive suite of digital advertising products and services and extend into complementary business lines, such as long-form content development and commerce.

The company generates revenue from advertising, content, and commerce and other.

Advertising includes display, programmatic and video advertising on the company’s owned and operated sites and applications, as well as third-party social media platforms. This revenue source is driven by the company’s industry-leading engagement, an overall shift to digital advertising, and the company’s scaled reach to multiple demographics. The company provides significant and differentiated value to advertisers by consistently delivering best-in-class audience engagement, with the most time spent among Gen Z and Millennial audiences as compared to other digital media competitor companies. Major platforms recognize the value of BuzzFeed’s brand-safe content, award-winning journalism, and the ability to engage large and diverse audiences, making the company a critical and trusted partner for advertisers.

Content includes paid or sponsored branded, syndicated, and studio content (including feature films) that is sold or licensed to third parties. The company’s content production approach increasingly allows for turn-key, lightweight options that are scalable and repeatable, with strong retention among advertisers. The company’s content revenue is driven by continued investment in the company’s content team, a strong data-informed understanding of the company’s audience, demand for trusted, brand-safe digital content, and the company’s brand integrity.

Commerce and other includes affiliate marketplace revenue, IP licensing and an experiential business, such as ComplexCon. The company’s editorial shopping content drives hundreds of millions of dollars in attributable transactions each year. Moving forward, the company plans to continue to onboard new marketplaces beyond consumer retail, expanding into new shopping categories to drive additional growth. With strong brand recognition and audience trust, BuzzFeed is well positioned to capitalize on the continued shift to online purchases.

Growth Strategy

The company’s strategies are to continue to grow and engage audiences; empower the company’s content creator teams; expand strategic partnerships; drive sustainable, profitable growth; and continue to look for strategic opportunities to bring additional subscale brands with loyal, complementary audiences to its portfolio in the future.

Customers

BuzzFeed offers a strong value proposition to customers and business partners looking to reach Millennial and Gen Z audiences at scale, in order to generate awareness and drive discovery, inspiration, and ultimately transactions involving their products and services. Customers rely on the company’s high-quality, engaging and brand-safe content, creativity, and reach across multiple platforms to accomplish these objectives.

The company’s customer base consists of global corporations and companies across a variety of industries, including among others, media and entertainment, consumer packaged goods, and retail, financial services, insurance, and technology, who utilize one or more of the company’s offerings in advertising, content, and commerce and other.

The company provides its advertising customers a broad array of offerings, including display, programmatic, and video advertising inventory to target users on the company’s owned and operated sites, applications, and social media platforms. The company’s content customers include third parties seeking to promote their businesses, products and services with the company’s content — the company can create customized promotional content for a third party’s film release.

The company’s commerce customers are e-commerce operators who partner with the company through affiliate programs, or retailers with whom the company enters into licensing and merchandising agreements. The company derives a significant portion of the company’s revenue from companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon through their various advertising and affiliate exchanges.

Intellectual Property

The company owns numerous domestic and foreign trademarks and other proprietary rights that are important to the company’s business and protect those rights in the company’s brands, including but not limited to, BuzzFeed, Tasty, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News, and Complex Networks. The company also maintains rights to the domain names www.buzzfeed.com, www.tasty.co, www.huffpost.com, www.buzzfeednews.com, and www.complexnetworks.com, among others.

As of December 31, 2022, the company held 320 registered trademarks in the U.S., including the BUZZFEED mark, the HUFFPOST mark, and the COMPLEX mark; and also held 646 registered trademarks in foreign jurisdictions.

Regulatory Matters

Compliance with the CCPA has caused BuzzFeed to incur compliance related costs and expenses.

The company is also subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes requirements with respect to website accessibility. Additionally, the company is subject to the CAN-SPAM Act, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and the Video Privacy Protection Act, each of which may place restrictions on how the company operates in a manner that adversely affects the company’s business.

Seasonality

The company’s business is subject to some seasonal influences. Historically, the company’s revenue is typically highest in the fourth quarter of the year (year ended December 2022) due to strong advertising spend and consumer spending during this quarter.