Looks like Tumblr actually does sorta care about making money: mobile users will see "up to four ads per day, and they'll be differentiated with a dollar-sign icon with beams shooting out of it," reports AdAge. Subtle! Sadly, this revenue will be too late to save the editorial team Tumblr just canned.
I am glad to see Tumblr finally concerned about making profit after all the funding rounds they have been through.
Nice of them to get around to that.
Among the first advertisers to try Tumblr's mobile ads are ABC Entertainment and ABC Family, GE, Pepsi and Warner Bros., which will debut teasers for the summer movies "The Great Gatsby" and "The HangovedPart III" this week.
I'm sure a promotion for Hangover III can fit quite comfortably between Jizzbath and Hedonistic Depravity. But ABC Family and Pepsi. I thought they were more family-friendly!
I think Jizzbath is actually a viral campaign for Gatsby.
David Karp is the model of a startup founder mugged by reality. Or at least mugged by Roelof Botha
Looks like Tumblr's 2013 revenue projections are trending downward. Just four months ago Forbes reported they were looking for $100 million of revenue in 2013, compared to 2012's $13 million.
Now Revenue Chief Lee Brown seems to have lowered the bar to mere profitability for 2013. That sames Forbes piece projected 2013 expenses at $40 million — a sharp decline.
What will they be projecting a few months from now?
I wonder if Karp himself has an answer to that.
Four ads seems reasonable, especially in mobile mode, where you just sort of flip through the posts quickly and only stop if something catches your eye. For Tumblr users, I don't see this being an issue at all (although i'm not sure how effective the ads will be), because people don't invest all their personal information in the site, and they haven't been screwed over by tumblr like we all have by FB, more than once. Their ads also tend to be (i said 'tend to be') better and more contextual than on other sites.
On FB, the ads are just idiotic and crazy intrusive. Rather than wonder why FB thinks I'd be interested in a given ad, I usually wonder how the advertising company has the money to buy the ads in the first place. They are amateur ads. On twitter, you get like a Mitt Romney ad in your feed, and it's just ridiculous.
Up to now, Tumblr ads have been pretty good, visually at least, and they tend to be contextual to the types of content people share on their dashboards. I hope they start turning a profit, and doing it in ways that don't sacrifice the best things about the site. I mean, it's not like they were going to make $40million or $100million selling themes. I do wish a site like Tumblr offered an ad-supported version and a subscription-based no-ads version. But I'm just a believer in paying for a service like Tumblr, as a hedge against secret policy changes, etc.
