BuzzFeed Gets Political; Tencent Takes A Page From Facebook

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“A Brand New Thing”

BuzzFeed received political ad money in the 2012 presidential election, but this is the first time it’s created content for campaigns, reports the industry trade Campaigns & Elections. BuzzFeed’s team made videos for Sen. Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina in 2015, and now the digital media publication will be creating native placements across its site, apps and social media for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign and an anti-Donald Trump super PAC, among others. “Anyone can create content. But what makes BuzzFeed unique is we have the data and technology to distribute it,” said Rena Shapiro, who leads BuzzFeed’s political outreach.

Tencent’s Ad Biz

Investors in the Chinese tech giant Tencent said on the company’s earnings call Thursday that “they are counting on Tencent’s ability to build a lucrative ad business on top of its social platforms by taking a page from Facebook’s playbook,” reports The Wall Street Journal. WeChat, Tencent’s messaging app business and the world’s reigning champ of in-app connected social, commerce and services [AdExchanger coverage], is less than two years out from when it started experimenting with paid media, and now advertising accounts for 19% of its overall revenue. More.

Clipped Wings

Twitter’s expected 2016 earnings dropped from $2.95 billion to $2.61 billion in eMarketer’s growth outlook update. The social platform has turned out products, like its Moments channel and algorithmic feed, that attempt to straddle the gulf between power users and newcomers, but data shows growth among younger users is declining. Twitter is losing its younger demographic to newer and more popular social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. EMarketer expects Twitter to grow 8% this year, slower than both Pinterest and Tumblr. More.

Webmasters

Google set off what many referred to as “Mobilegeddon” last year when it made a major adjustment to its mobile search algorithm to include site quality as a ranking signal. It was a major effort to upgrade the web community as apps take over user engagement. And in a blog post Wednesday, Google software engineer Klemen Kloboves says the search giant will power up that signal even further beginning in May. But Kloboves notes that a weak mobile site won’t necessarily be vanquished by Google’s algorithm: “Remember, the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal – so even if a page with high-quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank well if it has great, relevant content.”

But Wait, There’s More!