Short videos are a small window of life that are meant to be more appealing to people than still images. And within the fast growing world of internet, advertisers are seeking more ways to engage their customers. This has caught Tumblr's attention. As Yahoo! is seeking more dollars into its revenue, Tumblr is rolling out its first wave of autoplay video ads within users' feeds.
Brands including The CW, Lexus, Unilever's Axe, Ford Motor Company, Capital One, AT&T, Denny's, Purina, Viacom, Universal Pictures, JCPenney and Hulu, will be the first to use the Sponsored Video Posts before they open up to all advertisers.
After being acquired by Yahoo! for $1.1 billion, the platform has announced that its improving its ad business a step further. This has caused worries among Tumblr's devout users that were concluding Yahoo! in a hurry to commercialize it. And as the time comes, Both Yahoo! and Tumblr is trying to not make the already good things go bad.
"We want to make sure that the product that would come out for marketers to take advantage of is not a pre-roll product that's in front of the content that you want to see. It's the actual content you want to see," said Lee Brown, Tumblr's Global Head of Brand Partnerships.
Tumblr introduced video ads a month after it released mobile in-stream ads. Previously ad formats had inhabited less prominent real estate and were constrained to the "Radar" post on users' dashboads, which alternates between paid promotions and images curated by Tumblr's staff, and "spotlight" placements on pages highlighting top Tumblr blogs in categories.
With almost a 100 million monthly active users, Tumblr that generated $13 million in ad revenue in 2013, is anticipating Yahoo!'s marketing force to help it expand more quickly. With Yahoo! supporting its back, even without YouTube's experience in video, Tumblr could still attract advertiser interest by taking advantage of Yahoo!'s extensive footprint to satisfy advertisers' reach demands.
Yahoo!'s CEO Marissa Mayer and Tumblr's founder David Karp have said that the new native ads are part of its pre-existing roadmap.
The video ads that was tested in its beta phase, offers autoplay feature (only on Wi-Fi connections) and looping capability. The 'Vine-like' videos are aimed to take advantage of the same functionality on both desktop and mobile (Android and iOS). The videos are muted when they play, just like Facebook's video ads, and offer a speaker button to activate the sound. The ads, when played, will pop-out a video player adjacent to the dashboard so users can watch the video without interfering with user experience. There is also an option for playing high-definition quality videos if the user wants.
Tumblr's video player technology also support Vine and Instagram videos. This feature that allows advertisers to reuse videos they made for other platforms, aren't initially able to cross-post clips. Brown said that Tumblr would have to work out with Facebook-owned Instagram and Twitter-owned Vine to see how they can incorporate their video formats as ads.
The autoplay feature only charge advertisers when the ads has been viewed for 2 seconds. Advertisers won't pay for videos playing less than that, or for any looping views, shares or reblogs. Advertisers are given the options to target users based on their interest, gender and location.
As with users of Tumblr's iOS and Android apps, desktop users will see up to four sponsored posts per day.
Marissa Mayer said that Yahoo! is expecting Tumblr to generate over $100 million in revenue for the company. With the introduction of sponsored ads, Yahoo! is positive that Tumblr that is positioning itself as a better place for digital video destination and had doubled its number of blogs since its acquisition, has that ability.
The news of the Tumblr video ads also comes at a time when it's been rumored that Yahoo! is aiming to position the network as a competitor to YouTube by attracting younger audience. But instead of focusing on the ads that are common on other networks, Yahoo! is tempting to make Tumblr a place for brand advertising.
Earlier in 2014, Yahoo! has began distributing Tumblr's ads on the portal's digital magazines and within its content feeds.