When it first launched in 2006, BuzzFeed was a trailblazer, creating from scratch a playbook for sparking virality in the early days of the social internet.
Now, following its Monday acquisition by media executive Byron Allen, the brand and its sister property, HuffPost, have trained their focus on the newest battleground in the attention wars: the living room.
“As of this moment, BuzzFeed is officially chasing YouTube and the other big tech platforms,” Allen told The New York Times.
BuzzFeed is hardly alone in this pivot. Structural forces are threatening the durability of the open internet, with answer engines siphoning traffic away from websites and users increasingly gravitating toward mobile apps and walled gardens.
In response, media brands have adopted an increasingly distributed approach, cultivating audiences across channels including newsletters, podcasts, and live events. But one channel in particular appears poised for explosive growth: streaming television.
After years of deliberate expansion, streaming surpassed cable in total viewership in 2024, according to Nielsen. Its share of total television ad spend has gone from 15% in 2020 to 38% in 2025, with the crossover projected for 2027-2028, according to Adwave.
And while the streaming wars of the early pandemic centered largely on subscription-based products from the likes of Netflix, Disney, and Prime Video, the single largest player in the space for the last three years running is YouTube. The free, ad-supported platform captured 12.7% of all viewing in February—up from 7.9% in February 2023.
The platform, which has long been attractive to creators, is now increasingly drawing the attention of major media brands, as its accessibility, powerful algorithm, and simple monetization model make it nearly a video business in a box.
For a publisher like BuzzFeed, which has already built a dedicated following on the platform, doubling down on YouTube is a forward-thinking strategy. It can treat the website as the top of its content funnel, attracting viewers there before shepherding them into more direct relationships, such as through newsletters, podcasts, and commerce.
In this effort, Allen’s decades of expertise in television and the production infrastructure he has at hand could prove to be valuable tailwinds. The medium might be entirely different, but the content itself is not.
