Case Study: BuzzFeed Achieves 75% Affiliate Revenue Growth with Skimlinks

How BuzzFeed’s Entertainment Group took shoppable content monetization mainstream, without compromising the trust of their readers

BuzzFeed, the independent digital media company behind news and entertainment content for over 500 million monthly readers, wanted to turn its commerce content into a meaningful revenue stream without compromising audience trust. To do that, it partnered with Skimlinks, using its commerce monetization platform and data tools to better understand what content and merchants resonated with readers.

With Skimlinks, BuzzFeed gained simple-to-use dashboards and actionable insights that helped editors refine shoppable content, set clearer commerce KPIs, and optimize for click-through rate and revenue per click. The result was mainstreamed commerce publishing across the Entertainment Group, 10–50 dedicated commerce posts per week, and 75% year-over-year affiliate revenue growth in H2 2016, all while keeping reader trust central to the strategy.

BuzzFeed

Jessica Probus

Director of Market & Nifty