How Tumblr Should Do Promoted Posts

I like David’s idea here. Having a radar-like box that displays posts that your Tumblverse has paid to highlight adds a nice element to the mix: persistence. 

Scrolling back through my dashboard I see that a number of people have used post highlights today, but I wasn’t there to see them; if in addition to (or, you know, in place of) the little snipes in my dashboard, highlighted posts had a space in the dashboard where they could hang around for a couple of days, it’d give a different —and possibly significant — kind of weight to the action of highlighting a post.

Sure, that makes it feel rather more like “ad space,” but having flamgirlant and evangotlib advertising to me on Tumblr doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing.

caterpillarcowboy:

Thoughts expressed in this post are derived from conversations with Julie Fredrickson and Greg Battle.

As you all have seen, Tumblr recently began playing with the idea of publishers paying $1 to highlight posts in the stream. As I said then, I’m glad Tumblr is experimenting, and every time a community-based site makes changes, it always runs the risk of backlash, so kudos to them for having the fortitude to try new things.

With that said, who is it for? Regular users who tumble for fun about cats and last night’s dinner? Brands like Newsweek and Vogue? The $1 price points to “it’s for everyone” but the nature of announcements & promotions is dominated by organizations with an agenda. Given the desire of the latter group, I’d make them the focus.

If we were to start from scratch and think about how organizations could best promote their posts while maintaining the integrity of the Tumblr eco-system, I think we should take a page from Facebook’s Sponsored Stories. In the right rail of the dashboard, underneath (or instead of) the Radar, Tumblr should show a post by someone you already follow if they’ve paid to have their post featured there. The purpose is to reinforce the message of the post in case you missed it or forgot about it. Advertisers can pay more for more impressions, which is exactly what they want. Users don’t feel like they are being spammed, because they only see posts by people they already choose to follow. And Tumblr finally gets to monetize what they have in abundance - dashboard page views (hundreds of millions every day).

Source: caterpillarcowboy

19 Notes/ Hide

  1. emergency-locksmith reblogged this from whitneymcn
  2. roflrob reblogged this from caterpillarcowboy and added:
    going pro mode maybe?
  3. whitneymcn reblogged this from caterpillarcowboy and added:
    I like David’s...here. Having a radar-like box that displays posts that your Tumblverse...
  4. gbattle reblogged this from caterpillarcowboy and added:
    gbattle sez: OK, I’ll bite. I...a little different take than David (who
  5. lilyb said: This is a good use of the empty space, and if I already followed you, I’d be likely to pay close attention, rather than ignore whatever is going on there, as I do right now. Also, I might use it, and I probably won’t use the current arrow thing.
  6. lickystickypickywe said: I said this 3 years ago when the Radar appeared. Use that as “paid space” for all those who want to appear to the whole tumblr.-verse. Much better than these tags that now look just like stickers I used to put in my high school books and agenda.
  7. caterpillarcowboy posted this

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