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BuzzFeed stock (NASDAQ:BZFD) rose more than 30% Thursday morning (and initially jumped as much as 61%) following a report that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is paying the social-news company millions of dollars to create content for Facebook and Instagram.
The two reportedly reached a deal valued close to $10M last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Meta Platforms (META) is also among Communication stocks’ biggest gainers Thursday, up 2.4%.
BuzzFeed – which became known for generating viral content online – is helping build creator content for Meta Platforms as well as training creators to help grow their presence, according to the report. It marks a new step in what has been a years-long relationship between the two.
The news comes as growth has dropped to single digits on Facebook and Instagram against a threat from double-digit growth at rival short-video platform TikTok (BDNCE).
It also arrives amid a reallocation of Meta investment away from paying news publishers to fill a news tab and toward creator businesses.
In 2016, Meta agreed to pay $50M to a number of publishers (including BuzzFeed) to generate live video content, an approach it eventually discontinued.