BZFD - BuzzFeed marks 30% gain on reported Meta content creation deal

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.

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