BuzzFeed Launches E-Commerce Foray: News Digest

Latest from BuzzFeed: ‘Love It? Buy It!’

BuzzFeed has long pitched to advertisers the power of its technology to make branded content go “viral” among the millions of users who share the site’s quizzes and “listicles” with friends. Now, the company is hoping to help marketers sell their products, too.

BuzzFeed recently launched its first foray into e-commerce-enabled branded content with a post sponsored by L’Oréal USA that features a click-to-buy button for readers to purchase products from the cosmetics and beauty company that were referenced in the post.

Last Monday’s post titled “11 Vintage Hairstyles Anyone Can Pull Off,” sponsored by L’Oréal’s Makeup.com, features animated GIFs, tutorial links and Makeup.com illustrations of different types of buns, braids and blowouts for women to try. Below each tip is a “Love it? Buy It!” directing readers to a L’Oréal retail page where they can buy the product used to construct that particular hairstyle.

As marketers question if sponsored content is really working, an e-commerce capability can help BuzzFeed better quantify the business impact. BuzzFeed is providing the technology integration but all revenue from the e-commerce test goes to L’Oréal. BuzzFeed said it is too early to share statistics for the L’Oréal partnership yet.

BuzzFeed has successfully produced and distributed highly viral content: It attracted about 69 million unique visitors in the U.S. in August, up 62% from August 2013, according to comScore, and BuzzFeed says it gets about 75% of its traffic from social media sources. BuzzFeed said it wanted to experiment with whether consumers would use its site not only to read entertaining content but to buy products.

“From an engagement and sharing perspective, beauty tends to do very well,” said BuzzFeed Chief Revenue Officer Andy Wiedlin, adding that the site has found that “how-to” and “do-it-yourself” posts tend to get shared at a higher rate than other pieces of branded content.

—Nathalie Tadena

http://online.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-launches-e-commerce-foray-news-digest-1412551204