Today, Yahoo announced that sponsored content from Tumblr will now also be shared across Yahoo’s homepage and other properties. The move is the first outward facing synergy between Yahoo and Tumblr, and it’ll give marketers a “one-two punch” option for their Tumblr ads. They will be able to buy these new multi-platform ad units through Gemini, which is Yahoo’s new ad exchange for search and native advertising.
Tumblr has been loathe to call its ads anything other than “Sponsored Posts” and it has worked hard to make sure brands create content that looks and feels like any other organic Tumblr post. As you can expect, this means brands have been embracing the GIF, the visual tool that has become almost synonymous with Tumblr.
Now, those same ads can now be taken out of their native Tumblr home and shared across Yahoo and its many different content streams, which includes article pages, image galleries and digital magazines. Not only will those same ads reach a wider, more diverse audience, Yahoo will be able to provide in-depth data on their reach and performance.
For example, here’s a sponsored post from Lexus on Tumblr:
Now that same post can be places on Yahoo’s home page, looking like another one of its articles:
This works for Yahoo since the sponsored content from Tumblr is already in an engaging, click-worthy and visually appealing native ad format. By getting those ads, Yahoo can enrich its existing content and provide even more value for its advertisers.
However, this could be a headache for the brands, who will now have to work to create a single sponsored post that works just as well in Yahoo as it does in Tumblr. Remember, Tumblr’s audience is young, hip and highly geared towards niche activity, while Yahoo’s is almost the complete opposite. Its content is all-encompassing, without really going deep anywhere, and it’s still pretty much your parent’s site of choice. The challenge for brands is to come up with content that appeals to both those audiences in equal measure.
