Jan 2, 2019 · 26m · a16z
a16z Podcast | For Buzzfeed Sharing is the Metric that Matters
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti joins Chris Dixon to discuss how digital platforms, data science, and native content formats are reshaping modern media distribution, journalism economics, and video production.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 0.8 The host pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 7:04 Jonah reframes conventional print vs digital monetization critics
Jonah directly rejects the common media industry narrative that digital print transitions prove digital is inherently inferior, pointing out that critics confuse raw unique visitor counts with deep subscriber engagement time.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 3:33 Chris challenges the viability of digital news economicsChris poses a sharp skeptical premise asking how a news media company can build defensible business barriers once geographic print monopolies are eliminated by the internet.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 21:27 Jonah details flipping Hollywood studio production dynamicsJonah explains how traditional Hollywood studios operate like banks with massive variable costs per project, contrastingly detailing how BuzzFeed created fixed-cost studio infrastructure to rapidly test and iterate content based on audience feedback loops.
The host holds their own ▶ 6:31 Chris presents scale economics calculationChris demonstrates strong financial expertise by laying out the math showing that expanding the addressable smartphone market from 2.5 billion to 5 billion users easily offsets a 3x to 5x margin drop for modern digital publishers.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Economics and Rebuilding News Scale | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Chris frames the classic economic dilemma around post-monopoly news business models and brings quantitative insight regarding global smartphone scale (2.5B to 5B users) compensating for margin compression. Jonah expands by detailing digital barriers to entry like mobile speed, data science, and preferential attachment theory. The dynamic is highly collaborative with the host actively offering economic theories rather than just asking basic questions. | |
| Platform Native Content and Evolving Media Formats | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | The host offers insightful observations about listicle mechanics enabling itemized social sharing rather than traditional block prose. Jonah shares proprietary consumption data such as Pinterest sending double Twitter's traffic and long-form reading habits on mobile. Both speakers build on each other's points seamlessly without conflict. | |
| Cultural Reception of New Media vs Traditional Features | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Chris displays clear advertising domain knowledge by contrasting Google's intent-based auction model with flawed mobile banner ads reliant on fat-finger accidental clicks. Jonah explains BuzzFeed's unified content distribution system and how branded content can mirror high-value magazine publishing models. The dialogue is completely aligned with mutual skepticism toward traditional web banner monetization. | |
| Future Growth Video Production International Expansion and Data Insights | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Jonah educates the host on how BuzzFeed flipped traditional Hollywood film studio economics by absorbing fixed lot costs to allow low-variable-cost iterative web video production. He also details cross-network distribution data that social platforms themselves cannot track. Chris acts primarily as a supportive listener and synthesizer. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Peretti: Content sharing is the most important metric for BuzzFeed
“Sharing has always been the biggest metric because it shows someone thinks that a piece of content is worth passing on to a friend.”
Peretti: Optimizing for clickbait headlines causes long-term brand damage
“You can use data to get people to click a headline, but then not deliver on the story, and that actually has a long-term negative effect”
Peretti: Data science, mobile ads, and scale create media defensibility
“Having a site that runs quickly, having an advertising model that works on mobile having a good data science team that can give you better insights in terms of what people are sharing and what people are engaging with. Certain network properties, once you have…”
Peretti: BuzzFeed is profitable while funding investigative journalism and foreign correspondents
“And that's why we've been able to grow so quickly generate profits and in, while simultaneously investing in foreign correspondence and investigative news team and other things that people thought weren't possible for internet companies to invest in.”
Peretti: 100x internet reach compensates for lower per-user monetization rates
“So, so they're not the same, and also it's possible to reach more people than ever before, and so even if they didn't, if, even if things were monetized at a lower rate, the fact that you're able to reach a hundred X more people means that you can build a real…”
Peretti: BuzzFeed hit 400M monthly video views with half on mobile
“We did four hundred million video views last month, and about half is mobile.”
Peretti: Pinterest drives twice as much BuzzFeed traffic as Twitter
“Pinterest sends double the traffic to BuzzFeed as Twitter.”
Dixon: New web formats provoke cultural panic unlike traditional print novelties
“Because those have existed in newspapers for, you know, decades, it's considered ok, but then, you know, you have slidey things, and lists, and everything else, and because it's new, it's like, oh god, the web is destroying western culture.”
Dixon: The banner ad business model is non-viable and will collapse
“The decline of that very bad business model is going to Accelerate on mobile, because on mobile you simply can't fit all that stuff. It's a terrible, it's even a worse experience. I would wager, when you look at the click-through rates on mobile banner ads, it…”
Dixon: Digital media is limited to paywalls, native ads, crowdfunding, or billionaires
“You're left with a paywall model, which the New York Times and the Journal are, you know, and other, and the FT maybe are experimenting with. There's some other experiments going on with, like, crowdfunding and things, and then there's native advertising, and …”
Peretti: Paywalls fundamentally conflict with the public interest role of journalism
“The paywall model is unfortunate when you think about news being in the public interest. Where, you know, every time there's really serious news, the news, they have to take the paywall down, you know”
Peretti: Social platforms have a blind spot regarding cross-network content sharing
“One of the things that's, there's kind of blind spot for social networks, which is that they have huge amounts of data. They have huge number of logged in users, but they're only seen sharing within their network. And what ends up happening is sharing within t…”