According to Share Through, a technology company focused on perfecting their advertising software platform for digital media, native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed (Sharethrough, n.d).
BuzzFeed does not use banner ads as their form of advertising revenue, but instead they create sponsored versions of its content and articles for advertisers, also known as native advertising. BuzzFeed’s advertising team would look for advertisers and agencies that forward thinking and are willing to advertise in this form. This idea seems pretty smart as it would not only help BuzzFeed earn their profits, but also for the advertisers because of the virality of content about their brand (Shontell, 2012). Buzzfeed…show more content… Just to measure the success that BuzzFeed has had, the Huffington Post, which was also co-founded by Jonah Peretti, earned a revenue of $31 million in 2010 before it was sold to AOL a year later and was expected to earn $60 million of sales in 2011. BuzzFeed is now bigger than what the Huffington Post was at 2011. Their success was accomplished through a triple amount of unique visitors of 85 million in August 2013 (Boxer, 2013). According to founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, Jonah Peretti, it has grown three times bigger than in 2012 and eight times bigger than in 2011 (Ha, BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti Says The Site Is Profitable, With 85M Uniques And 300+ Employees, 2013). As of August 2014, BuzzFeed has managed to raise $50 million from primary investor Andreessen Horowitz, which values the news site at approximately $850 million. At the end of 2014, BuzzFeed hit $100 million in revenue (Weprin,
