Adweek: How Tasty Mastered Social Video and Helped Drive 50% of BuzzFeed’s Revenue

The viral digital publisher BuzzFeed, founded by Jonah Peretti 10 years ago, creates addictive content that has shaken up the media world. According to a recent Adweek article, BuzzFeed’s food brand Tasty created 2,000 recipe videos in 15 months that reach 500 million people a month. The brand has 100 million Facebook fans and in the month of September, the site has generated close to 1.8 billion views coming from the platform. Tasty has taken advantage of the growing industry, with eMarketer estimating that in 2017 the digital video industry will be worth $12.5 billion.

"Every single video that comes out, I look at it, I analyze it, and over time, I'm able to get a sense of what numbers I'm looking for or what number signals a viral video within the first hour," said Alvin Zhou, video producer at Tasty. He adds, only half-joking: "I refresh the Tasty page at least 200 times a day."

Making a Tasty video though is half science and half art. By looking at the data from past videos, the 75-person team effectively predicts the video’s buzz factor before it goes live. A complex distribution strategy is implemented and analyzed yet again for the next content piece.

The brand is starting to also experiment with longer pieces of content as well as including celebrities and chefs in videos to see if they can rack up even more views. Brands like American Express, Newel Brands, and Wendy’s have tried sponsored Tasty content to try to join in on the brand’s success.