Tumblr Positions Advertisements on Dashboards

By Gilbert Falso :: 5:08 PM

The ink isn’t even dry on Yahoo’s purchase contract for Tumblr, and already changes are afoot at the blogging site. Today, Tumblr announced the addition of advertising posts that will appear on user dashboards. On Tumblr, the dashboard is what a user sees when they log into the service – it displays the blog posts of all of the Tumblr blogs that they are currently subscribed to.

About a month ago, Tumblr inserted advertisements into its native mobile apps, and the advertisements coming to the web-based dashboard will work in a similar fashion.

Tumblr is calling the ads “sponsored web posts” and will include content from the following partners at launch: AT&T, Capital One, Denny’s, Ford Motor Company, Purina, Universal Pictures, and Viacom. Like traditional Tumblr posts, users will have the ability to take standard actions with the ads, such as reblogging them, liking the brand, following, or sharing the ads. Paid ads will be noted on the site with a dollar sign graphic.

“The engagement rates on the Tumblr Radar and Sponsored Mobile Posts have been spectacular and we have taken this same carefully architected approach to this new web in-dash opportunity,” explained Tumblr’s Lee Brown, Global Head of Sales for the company.

Tumblr has designed the advertising units so that users should see only four sponsored posts on their dashboard per day.