Tumblr Lets Brands Run Ads in Users’ Dashboards for 24 Hours

Tumblr continues to expand its native advertising offerings with a new ad unit called “Sponsored Day” that enables brands to place sponsored posts in users’ dashboard for 24 hours. 

The “Sponsored Day” ads, labeled with a sparkling “S” sign in the upper right-hand corner, will help drive traffic to a brand’s custom content channel on the Explore tab (Web) and on mobile, where trending topics and curated posts from the Tumblr community are displayed.

“I think the new ‘Sponsored Day’ ad offering from Tumblr is really interesting,” says Holly Robertson, paid social and native strategy lead for agency SOCIALDEVIANT. “It feels very reminiscent of Twitter’s Promoted Trend offering. However, unlike the Promoted Trend, advertisers have more control over what content becomes associated with its Sponsored Day because they own the ability to curate it, which is an incredible advantage in terms of ensuring brand relevancy and safety.”

Marketers without a Tumblr blog can leverage the ad unit as well, and any user on the Web can access the content without being logged into the platform.
Advertisers will be charged on a cost-per-mille (CPM) pricing model.

“I do find it odd that it’s offered at a CPM,” Robertson says. “From an efficiency standpoint, this ad offering would be much more attractive if it was available on a cost-per-click [CPC] model instead.”

While Tumblr hasn’t disclosed how many brands are experimenting with “Sponsored Day,” Nike is the first to test out the new ad offering as part of its #betterforit campaign that targets women.

The new format comes hot on the heels of Tumblr 4.0, a sizable update to the platform’s iOS application, which was released yesterday. And these moves follow a number of new native advertising offerings from the platform in the last year, including “Sponsored Video Posts” and “Creators Network.”

Homepage image via Shutterstock.