Buzzfeed has signed a global advertising deal with WPP’s media planning and buying arm GroupM which includes an adspend commitment thought to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
The year-long deal between GroupM and Buzzfeed will see WPP agencies get preferential media pricing for ad campaigns, put staff in Buzzfeed Motion Pictures to create branded video content for WPP clients, and a creative residency to allow WPP creative teams to access Buzzfeed’s expertise in producing social content for all platforms.
WPP will also get exclusive access to Buzzfeed’s proprietary data and analytics platform Pound, which tracks how content gets shared across the social web, including messaging.
GroupM chief digital officer Rob Norman said in a statement: “The future of advertising lies at the intersection of creativity, data, media and technology; that’s where BuzzFeed has built its business and proved its value to brands.
“This is a terrific opportunity for our clients to move swiftly and succeed in the fastest growing media platforms. We have appointed partnership leaders from each GroupM agency, and other WPP agencies will do the same.”
Greg Coleman, the president of BuzzFeed, said: “This is an exciting time for our company. Our audience is growing on and off platform. Our Motion Pictures studio is booming and now reaches 1.5 billion video views a month – from shorter than short form on Snapchat, to original scripted series.
“We’re excited to take our unique approach and voice in branded content, data and iterative learning in a big way with GroupM and their clients.”
While neither party would disclose any specific terms of the deal, they did say it involves no investment or equity exchange between the companies.
