BuzzFeed's made a name for itself with a cross-platform distribution model that relies heavily on publishing to social platforms. Now, it's looking to leverage that reach for more brand dollars.
During a keynote at South by Southwest Interactive, BuzzFeed's marketing chief Frank Cooper unveiled a beta test of an ad format dubbed Swarm. It allows advertisers to run campaigns simultaneously across all of his company's Web and mobile properties and six of its social platforms: Snapchat Discover, Vine, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr.
"Instead of forcing all your traffic and spending all your resources to drive people to your owned and operated platforms, why not go to where they are," Cooper said. "We've done it, and in doing that we've built this power of an audience that crosses these different platforms."