Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the BuzzFeed Incorporated Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Juliana Clifton, Vice President of Communications. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuzzFeed, Inc.'s Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Juliana Clifton, VP of Communications for BuzzFeed. Joining me today are CEO, Jonah Peretti; and CFO, Matt Omer. Before we begin, please note that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Risks and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in our Q2 2025 earnings release and in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our Q2 2025 quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. The use of non-GAAP financial measures allows us to measure the operational strength and performance of our business to establish budgets and to develop operational goals for managing our business. We believe adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin are relevant and useful information for investors because they allow investors to view performance in a manner similar to the method used by our management. A reconciliation of these GAAP to non- GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, which is available now on our Investor Relations website. Now I'll turn the call over to Jonah.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm proud of what our team was able to accomplish in Q2. We've been focused for the past 2 years on transforming our business, and these efforts are continuing to bear fruit. This transformation hasn't been easy given the dynamics in our industry. Over the past few years, it's become clear that it's impossible to build a strong digital media business on top of the platforms provided by Google and Meta. To respond to this shift, our team went to work prioritizing our direct audience and increasing engagement on our owned properties. We invested in our sites and apps, leveraged new AI technologies and diversified our distribution sources. This has enhanced our competitive position in digital media and set us up for the future. A few highlights. We've shifted to direct and diversified audience sources. Direct visits, internal referrals and app usage now make up 61% of BuzzFeed's O&O traffic, surpassing Facebook and reducing dependence on external algorithmic platforms. HuffPost's homepage referrals grew 12% year-over-year and now account for 3/4 of its total page views. Engagement and loyalty are rising. Nearly half of BuzzFeed and HuffPost daily users return more than once a week. Log-in users on buzzfeed.com have tripled over the past 2 years, building deeper relationships with our audience. These changes have helped BuzzFeed hold the top spot in digital media with 69.9 million hours of U.S. time spent in Q2, which is 3% growth quarter-over- quarter, making BuzzFeed the only company in our competitive set to grow in this period. Also in the second quarter, buzzfeed.com led all individual competitors with 36.4 million hours, ahead of People, Vox and more, and HuffPost recorded 20.7 million hours, beating major legacy news brands by a wide margin. Put simply,…

Thank you, Jonah. As Jonah just touched on, our Q2 '25 results reflect the strength and the resilience of our diversified business model as well as the benefits of the transformation work we've done over the past 2 years. We've built a leaner, more efficient organization and prioritize high-margin revenue streams, positioning BuzzFeed for long-term value creation in a changing digital landscape. With that, I'll share more on our second quarter financial results. As a reminder, all financial results are reported on a continuing operations basis. Total revenue for the quarter was $46.4 million compared to $41.1 million in Q2 '24, an increase of 13% year-over- year. Growth was driven by a fourfold increase in studio revenue, a 23% increase in organic affiliate commerce and an 11% increase in programmatic advertising. These gains offset softer results in direct sold advertising and direct sold content. Advertising revenue totaled $22.6 million compared to $23.2 million in Q2 '24, down just 3% despite direct sold headwinds. Within this category, programmatic advertising grew by 11% year-over-year to $17.4 million, demonstrating continued improvements in yield and targeting across both owned and operated properties and third-party platforms. This is offset by a 31% decline in direct sold advertising, which continues to reflect both market softness in this category and our deliberate effort to focus on more programmatic advertising. Content revenue increased 53% to $10.7 million compared to $7 million in Q2 '24. This strong growth was primarily driven by a nearly fourfold increase in studio revenue of $4.7 million year-over-year, primarily related to the delivery of a feature film in the quarter. This was partially offset by a 17% decline in direct sold content, reflecting muted demand in this category and our deliberate move towards higher-value partnerships. Commerce and other revenues rose to $13.1 million compared…

Thanks, Matt. We received a few questions in advance I'll go through now. The first one we received. How are you thinking about diversifying away from traditional referral sources like Facebook and Google? Jonah, do you want to take this one?

Sure. So today, over 60% of our traffic is -- to our owned and operated properties comes from direct sources, so internal referrals and app usage. So we have really worked our way through this transformation where several years ago, we were a business that really focused on getting traffic from these distributed platforms, and that was really the sort of earlier BuzzFeed model. We've really transformed the company over the past few years to be much more about things like homepage traffic, HuffPost's homepage is thriving and up 12% year-over-year, accounting for the majority of HuffPost's page views. We've seen a similar thing with BuzzFeed, really driving a lot of the traffic is being driven by people spending more time on our site, engaging more on the site, recirculating traffic, people coming direct, people using our apps. And I think having a stronger, more direct audience relationship is really the key to building a strong digital media business. The platforms are -- have not as of late been reliable partners for publishers and publishers have to find their own audience and build really close connections with audiences, and that's what we've done.

All right. The next question we received. What's your view on the future of platforms? And how do you think about platform dependency now?

I mean, at one level, it's very impressive what TikTok and Instagram and other algorithmic feeds have done. They've made very compelling products that people spend a lot of time with. I think that it's become clear recently that, if anything, these kinds of products are overoptimized and to the point where they've become addictive and the people using these products often regret the time they've spent on them. And that's in part because powerful machine learning and AI is recommending lots of content and there's infinite amounts of content in these feeds and people are scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, and it's filling every sort of spot in their day. It's been a very powerful business for those companies. But we're seeing that increasingly, there's a demand for people who want to get off their phones, whether that's to do things with friends in the real world or whether that's to find media that is more fulfilling to consume and doesn't have as much as that kind of addictive properties. And so BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Tasty are really benefiting from being trusted destinations with real brands that -- where consumers can go and consume content that's made for them in a way that isn't designed to try to get them to scroll endlessly, but is designed to really give them a lot of value. And I think BF Island is really reimagining the social media space from the perspective of what would make people feel really happy about their time spent on these kinds of apps. And we're building something great that's using new AI technologies that we think will be a tremendous escape and oasis from some of the parts of the Internet that people are looking to escape from. So I think creating little pockets of joy and truth on the Internet is actually a strong business strategy.

And since you brought that up, is there anything else you can share about BuzzFeed Island?

I mean it's incredibly fun and can't wait to share with more people.

Thanks. And the last question we received. As platforms have become less publisher-friendly, which do you feel show the most promise?

I think there's some new entrants that are pretty interesting. Apple News continues to be an important source of high-quality traffic, particularly for HuffPost. I think, as I mentioned earlier, direct and homepage traffic are really key. If you have consumers coming directly to your product, that's a really strong signal. And I think IP that is differentiated allows you to go cross-platform. And so we're seeing that with our studio where we've been able to distribute content across multiple platforms with IP that we own that consumers seek out. So I would say that's the key. And when you have a strong audience connection, you also can monetize more effectively. So the quick little referral where someone is only spending a short amount of time on your site is a lot less valuable from a monetization standpoint than people who are spending a lot of time and really trust your brand. Affiliate and programmatic revenue have grown for us, and they've grown in part because we have quality traffic, not just quantity of traffic, but a large number of really dedicated consumers who come seek us out and spend time with us, and that's a much more valuable form of audience.

Now I'll hand the call back over to our operator, James.

Thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.