David Karp, Tumble’s founder and chief, has said brands can now advertise on the ‘dashboard’ area of the site from May 2.
Speaking at Ad Age’s Digital Conference in New York, Karp said he was an “idiot” for once saying he was “opposed to advertising” during an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2010.
The majority of internet companies – which want to remain free at the point of the entry – have to resort to advertising sooner or later in order to support the service. Twitter is a classic case in point – having resisted commercialising the service for several years – until finally rolling out ‘promoted tweets’, its own form of adverts, two years ago.
Lots of brands already have their own Tumblr page but this step-change for the New York-based company, will give them the first opportunity to officially advertise on the network.
Brands will be able to pay for adverts to appear in the service’s ‘radar’ slot which is used to showcase popular blog entries from users.
The site has been looking for additional revenue streams as it continues to hold out from displaying Google’s advertising – which Karp said would be a “complete last resort” despite the extremely lucrative nature of such an arrangement.
Tumblr launched in 2007 and since then has become extremely popular with more than 40 million individual blogs.
