Telstra and CommBank are the first Australian brands to partner with Buzzfeed Australia, with both launching native advertising campaigns locally.
Keith Hernandez, executive director, Buzzfeed International said that Buzzfeed ideally sought brand partners who already had a strong understanding of how to best utilise social media.
“We had already identified CommBank and Telstra,” he said.
Off the back of Telstra's 'New Phone Feeling' campaign the brand has launched a campaign on Buzzfeed Australia titled 15 Feelings That Can’t Be Beat and 14 Secrets Only Your Phone Knows About You.
Hernandez said that these style of campaigns work well because, “they are fan first, they are less about selling a product or getting people to buy the product right now, they are carrying on a conversation or rather than trying to control the conversation”.
“Telstra had its core creative concept, which is based about that amazing split second we touch our new phone for the first time and it was about how do you capture that and do more to amplify the awesome creative you already have,” Hernandez said.
CommBank, to coincide with the commencement of the University academic year, launched 13 Life Lessons We All Learn At Uni and 14 Ways To Make Uni Life Cheaper.
“CommBank really focused on O Week to create a concept that speaks to a younger audience in a fun and engaging way. It's about thinking about entertaining the audience rather than how do we take advantage of our audience,” Hernandez said.
Buzzfeed launched in Australia in January this year and at the time was calling for both advertisers and staff to help bolster their new operation.
The local operation now has three editorial staff, however the sales operation is still run out of Buzzfeed's Los Angeles and New York offices.
The Australian site is currently the 12th most viewed news site according to the latest Nielsen online data with the site attracting 1.12 million views a month.
The next big focus for Buzzfeed will be mobile, said Hernandez.
“Our traffic is split 55 per cent on mobile compared to 45 per cent desktop and we see mobile getting to 60 per cent to 65 per cent fairly quickly. People always have their phones with them and because of that they feel more comfortable with them,” he said.
Moving forward Hernandez said there are new partnerships coming through the pipeline for the Australian market and so far the response from advertisers has been extremely positive.
"People are moving digital only so brands have to be comfortable in the digital space, the brands that we are working with are forward thinking and taking a leap of faith with us – having a lot of fun with us and the response has been amazing in Australia."
He would not be drawn on numbers in terms of shares for CommBank and Telstra but the brand's Facebook pages show 558 likes and 818 likes respectively so far.
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