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Tumblr brings ads to users' blogs

Michelle Avenant
By Michelle Avenant, portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 29 Jul 2016

Blog-based social network Tumblr on Thursday began placing advertisements on the platform.

Unlike advertising on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, Tumblr ads will not be slotted into users' newsfeeds. They will instead appear on users' blogs, similarly to how YouTube places ads on its users' videos.

Users can opt out of having advertising on their blogs by switching off the "on-blog advertising" toggle in their settings for each blog, although the feature is turned on by default. Tumblr has chosen to turn off advertising on certain blogs by default - namely those posting about sensitive topics - although authors of these blogs can turn on advertising if they wish.

Tumblr says it is introducing on-blog advertising "so that later this year people can start making money from their blogs" through a partner programme between Tumblr, its users and its advertisers. Tumblr adds that it is "still working out the details" of the programme, such as which users will be eligible for the programme and how much they will earn, and will roll out the programme later in 2016.

The blogging platform has confirmed that users will have to register for the partner programme to make money from advertising, and that only blogs using Tumblr's default "Optica" theme will be supported upon the programme's launch.

Tumblr has also assured users that they are allowed to keep any existing advertising on their blogs which has been set up independently from the platform.

While Tumblr focuses on the advertising's potential benefit to its users, the platform also stands to gain from the move, notes the Wall Street Journal, observing that since its launch in 2007, the site has only ever asked users to spend money on certain optional paid themes. The platform has an extensive library of blog themes, many of which are free.

Tumblr was bought by Yahoo for $1 billion in 2013, although the ailing tech company wrote down the platform's value by $230 million in February. Tumblr now forms part of a cluster of online products Yahoo is selling to Verizon for $4.8 billion, as announced earlier this week.

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