80% of BuzzFeed’s entire audience is now on mobile, and is “five times more likely” to engage with and share BuzzFeed content than non-mobile users, it has been revealed.
Speaking at a Mediatel debate in partnership with Fetch and Google this week that examined the challenges around the growing app economy, the company’s European general manager, Kate Burns, said that this “highly engaged” audience has also become a “testing ground” for the business.
“Our apps are used more to learn about our audiences,” Burns said, “so we use our owned and operated apps to understand them better.”
Burns, who joined BuzzFeed less than a year ago after high-profile stints at Google, Bebo and AOL, said that the company’s business model is “more than mobile-first”, as she went on to reveal that the device in which consumers view content on entirely governs its production values, writing style and in the case of video, the duration.
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“Everything is around the premise of ‘where is my audience?’, ‘what device are they viewing this?’ and ‘how can we find them?’,” she said.
“It’s about understanding what my user wants to see and how they’re going to consume that content, and then we create it from there.”
BuzzFeed currently publishes content across 30 platforms, creating more than five billion views a month – half of which come from video.
Burns added that, through the use of third-party data, BuzzFeed is able to better understand what its audience is watching, how they are engaging with it and how different platforms influence engagement and views.
“We use that as a constant test and iteration approach…So with every video we create and send out to our [app] audience, rather than driving them to our owned and operated sites, we gain more understanding,” she said.
Over the last month, BuzzFeed has attracted more than 474 million users across the globe, with 50% of that audience aged between 18 and 34. Social media remains a key driver of growth, with 75% of the publisher’s traffic coming from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
Looking ahead, Burns revealed that the adoption of virtual reality is definitely on the cards, with BuzzFeed already employing specialist teams to aide its development.
“This is a massive opportunity for us…We’ve been watching the rise of VR with interest for the last six months and we’re now dedicating teams around it,” she said.
“Watch this space.”
