Website www.playbuzz.com CEO Shaul Olmert (2012–) Founded 2012 | Launched December 2013 Founder Shaul Olmert | |
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Created by Shaul Olmert, CEO & Co-founder
Tom Pachys, CPO & Co-founder Alexa rank 1,371 / 2,361 Playbuzz (US/Global 05/2016) Profiles | ||
Playbuzz is an online publishing platform for publishers, brand agencies and individual content creators to create content in interactive formats such as polls, quizzes, lists, video snippets, slideshows, and countdowns. Playbuzz generated content is generally associated with viral media, that can be shared via social media or embedded elsewhere on the web. Founded in 2012, content generated from Playbuzz was the most shared on Facebook as of January 2015 with an estimated 10 million shares per month.
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History
Playbuzz was founded in 2012 by Shaul Olmert and Tom Pachys. Olmert is the son of former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert and has worked as an executive with Nickelodeon and also co-founded the social game app GameGround. Pachys is a graduate of IDC and also the co-founder of Whimado.
Playbuzz was founded as PlayChanger in July 2012. PlayChanger worked with game developers and publishers to distribute crowd-sourced content games within verticals such as sports, music and fashion. Playbuzz was officially launched in December 2013 as a modified version of PlayChanger.
By June 2014, Playbuzz broke the top 10 of Facebook's most shared publishers. The website itself reached 70 million unique views the same month, half of which were referred from Facebook. Within 10 months of the Playbuzz platform's launch, it surpassed 7.5 million monthly Facebook shares, making it the second most shared publisher on Facebook in September 2014.
According to Forbes, seven of the 10 biggest stories on Facebook in September 2014 involved content that originated on Playbuzz. The company took over the number one spot as the most shared publisher on Facebook in November 2014 with approximately 9 million shares, holding the spot through January 2015 with an estimated 10 million shares. Playbuzz was listed by Inc. as one of the 15 Israeli Startups Getting Hot at the Turn of 2015 and also voted one of Europe's Hottest Startups the same year by Wired.
Funding
Playbuzz originally raised $3 million in Series A funding from Carmel Ventures. It surpassed $19 million in total funding in March 2015 when it received an additional $16 million led by Saban Capital and existing investors that include Carmel Ventures and FirstTime Ventures.
In March 2016, Playbuzz announced that it had closed $15 million in new funding led by the Walt Disney Company and Saban Ventures, including participation from initial investors, bringing the company's total funding to $31 million.
Content
Content is generated by individual content creators as well as brands, publishers and agencies. Playbuzz formats are free to use for editorial purposes, with a cost associated for branded or sponsored content campaigns. The website has ready-to-use formats for posts that have been used by publishers such as TheBlaze, The Huffington Post, MarthaStewart.com, AOL, and MTV to push content to social media. The company launched its first video format in 2016.