Ads Coming to Tumblr Radar
futurejournalismproject:
But don’t call them ads.
Via Business Insider:
In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tumblr CEO and founder David Karp said, “We’re pretty opposed to advertising. It really turns our stomachs.”
How times have changed. Karp announced at Ad Age’s Digital Conference that on May 2, Tumblr will start offering advertisers the ability to buy an ad unit on Tumblr Radar, which highlights the site’s top posts and gets approximately 120,000 impressions a day.
“I was probably being an idiot then,” Karp said of his earlier renunciation of all advertising. His conversion is relatively recent—on April 12 he told Ad Age that advertising was “a complete last resort.”
Tumblr spokesperson Katharine Barna added that the real estate being offered to advertisers was “not an ‘ad unit’ per se, but a package of native promotion for the Tumblr post ― the most essential and versatile piece of our network.”
Last week Advertising Age interviewed Karp and asked a basic question: “Can the Company Be a Business Without Traditional Advertising?”
So… Tumblr Radar is not being replaced by advertising, but instead will have banners accompanying each post? And if so, is Topherchris still the omnipotent person responsible for handpicking radar-worthy content?
