Tumblr is growing rapidly, but its strongest demographic is one without much money to spend, making advertising on the blogging platform a tough proposition for its new owner, Yahoo.
Tumblr has garnered a lot of attention for its fast-growing blogging platform, which is now one of the most trafficked sites on the Web. But there are some less promising data points, as well, accordingto Compete, a company that provides analytics-based insights for digital marketers.
Tumblr’s blogs see less traffic than those powered by either WordPress or the outmoded Blogspot, according to Compete. And its users are younger and have lower incomes than those on the other blogging platforms.
“Most young people on Tumblr don’t have excess money to spend,” Compete said bluntly of its findings.
But Tumblr users seem to love the platform, and spend more than three times as long on the site as users do on competing blogging platforms.
But these users are not loyal to Yahoo and could leave Tumblr if ads clutter their experience there, Compete warned.
Compete concluded that advertisements will succeed on Tumblr if Yahoo is conservative with the amount of sponsored content it introduces and includes advertisements for reasonably priced goods that use visual content that adhere to the overall ethos of the site.
