Updated. In one of the first ever animated GIF acquisition announcements, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer confirmed that the internet giant is acquiring Tumblr. We’ve described how important Tumblr is to TV and watched fan communities thrive and take ownership over their favorite TV shows, through artwork, GIFs, memes and more. What will the future hold for TV on Tumblr? What could TV networks expect from this major announcement in the social media world?
Advertising will be coming to Tumblr soon:
While we’ve constantly seen networks flock to Tumblr and fans create art on Tumblr advertising has been limited. Facebook and now Twitter advertising is becoming a must for many TV networks who want to leverage trends and conversations for premiers, tent pole events like awards shows and more. Tumblr’s paid options have been minimum. If implemented in the right way, Yahoo!’s infrastructure could easily help TV networks creatively target the thousands of fans that are out there obsessing over their shows that might not no to even look for an official Tumblr.
TV networks’ Tumblrs are wildly popular – how will TV execs feel about Yahoo!/Tumblr monetizing on their success?
Tumblrs like Game of Thrones and Doctor Who are part of the backbone of greatness on the platform. The amazing fact that resulted in the lack of advertising on Tumblr is that TV networks couldn’t advertise to fans so they had to join them. They’ve built huge audiences around genius creative ideas and involved their fans maybe more than any other social platform. Will TV networks be in an uproar if they begin to see ads on their built out pages.
Tumblr will grow their TV team allowing for more meetings and strategizing:
We’ve seen Twitter Media’s team grow in addition to Facebook’s entertainment group. With Yahoo!’s backbone Tumblr will be able to create more case studies reach more parts of the country, speak at more conferences and help network executive unfamiliar with the amazing subculture, realize the natural relationship to the passionate TV fan. Tumblr’s already done a great job at this and now you’ll see them turning every social media team into TV fan art curation experts.
Tumblr’s mobile reach can grow significantly:
While reading Tumblr content on mobile has always been easy, publishers haven’t flocked to Tumblr’s mobile offerings like they have Twitter and Facebook. Integrations with IntoNow’s CapIt (also owned by Yahoo!) could make a compelling force for real-time content creation during shows. IntoNow has confirmed that they will be adding a post to Tumblr function eventually, for now you can copy an item to the clipboard.
The future will be an exciting one for Tumblr as it faces a giant growth spurt and a maturation out of edgy startup.
Thanks to Lost Remote’s Alex Weprin for contributing to this article.