Yahoo7 makes Australia first country outside US to monetise microblogging site Tumblr
Australia is the first non-US market where social platform Tumblr will be commercialised, with Yahoo7 launching a new sales team for the microblogging platform with Woolworths and Telstra among the brands signed on as launch partners.
Speaking at an event last night 28-year-old Tumblr founder David Karp explained: “Part of why Australia was the first stop for our international rollout was that it is one of the biggest organic markets in the world.”
Tumblr is claiming it has some 4.6m local Australian users, with half of those estimated to be between 18-35-years-old.
Harrison
“Today, we’re giving Australian advertisers a new way to connect with audiences on Tumblr,” said said Ed Harrison, CEO of Yahoo7.
“It is a new way to talk to that youth audience. There are 4.6m Australians many of them a young audience that is just so engaged with the platform.
“There are brands already starting to play with Tumblr – they don’t need us to do that but of course we can play a role in helping to facilitate that and we have brand strategists in market who will be taking on that task.”
Yahoo7 last night celebrated the Australian launch of the microblogging platform noting how brands will be able to access different post types, including videos, GIFs, images, and audio as they attempt to target a more Gen Y/millennial audience.
Alongside launch partners that also included Monash University and Studio Canal, Yahoo7 will also be launching its own brands on Tumblr this week, including Home & Away, Yahoo7 Entertainment, Dancing with the Stars and 7News Raw showcasing new and exclusive content via dedicated Tumblr profiles.
“We have already got Home & Away up and running, there is a lot of interest in the big shows like X Factor,” said Harrison.
“Tumblr offers the best of two online worlds; combining the creative control of a traditional website with the active audience of a social platform. Tumblr’s users are actively seeking out content that inspires and entertains them, opening the doors for brands to be more creative and tell their story in new and more authentic ways.”
Harrison argued that Tumblr was the final “piece of the jigsaw” for the digital joint venture between Yahoo and Seven West Media.
“It is the social piece – that of course is where Tumblr fits in,” he said. “We are building a new business around growth areas, we are talking about mobile, video, native and social. If you think about those things and their importance to us more than half of business and assets are in those areas.”
One of Yahoo7’s parent companies Seven West Media this week posted a loss of $1.8bn following major write down in its TV licences and goodwill, while Yahoo7 saw its earnings before interest and tax fall to $25.5m 22.4 per cent on last year.
Tumblr claims it reaches an audience of more than 500m worldwide with more than 250m blogs and over 118bn posts on the network.
Nic Christensen
Related content:
The link for the Woolworths blog is clicking through to the Telstra blog?
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Hi Confused,
Thanks for flagging now fixed.
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
great as a simple publishing platform. Terrible in terms of content discovery.
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The Telstra and Woolies examples seem more designed for the pinterest platform and don’t have the usual tumblr look & feel…..wondering if this is deliberate?
I also think couldn’t this content just naturally be housed on their own respective brand sites in the same design and pushed to that way?
How will people find this content, by spending with Yahoo?
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