It may have once satirised branded content – “oh, awesome, a sponsored post by a snack food company on my favorite media website” – but with the creation of an in-house advertising agency, The Onion will now cater to marketers with native videos and articles. Why would any brand pay to be ridiculed?

If the internet is a procrastinator's playground, websites such as BuzzFeed are listicle wormholes of distraction that play into our guiltiest pleasures. But while BuzzFeed may have pioneered the listicle format, young upstart PlayBuzz has become the go-to place for mindless browsing. But how has it cracked the format for creating spreadable social media content?

Can you parallel park Harriet Harman’s Pink Bus? If you’re unsure of the answer, a trip to Sun Nation might help. The tabloid minisite – a spin-off from The Sun – features a host of politics-lite features and games, as the newspaper looks to boost clicks in the run-up to the election.

A video shot surreptitiously on a smartphone documents an altercation between a bus driver and an irate young woman. Another offers a window into a high school cafeteria, where dozens of girls rip at each other’s hair, screaming like banshees. What is it that makes violence go viral?

Selling clothes plastered with memes, gifs and poop emojis, Shop Jeen has Gen Z and Y set firmly in its sights. But how has 23-year-old founder Erin Yogasundram – dubbed the “Queen Bee Of the internet” – amassed a cult following without spending a single dollar on advertising?

Ever felt left out when your friends are talking about the latest viral video, but you haven’t seen it yet? YouTube’s new trending tab is a leaderboard of the videos that are going viral right now, making this problem a thing of the past. Now, you can see videos go viral in real-time.

Did YouTube kill the Hollywood star? In the second installment of this two-parter, we look at why Gen Z value the talents and opinions of their digital peers, what services they are flocking to and how a shift towards user generated content will affect the future of media production and distribution.

Listicles, celeb gossip, virals, and vloggers. Nothing works harder to capture and retain our attention than the internet. But if clicks, page views, and ‘likes’ no longer cut it when it comes to gauging how engaging a platform really is. How should we be measuring a brands money-making potential?