This is Tomorrow

There's an interesting feature at Mashable http://mashable.com/2010/10/03/news-media-tumblrs/#The-Economist which lists about 30 or so media brands that now have blogs on the platform of the moment - Tumblr. They range from serious stuff like Newsweek through to more edgy blogs from the likes of Vice and Buzzfeed. There's also a few Brits namely Future Mags' Total Film and The Economist.

Anyhow today we sat in the Sutro Digital office and tried to work out why media brands are all over Tumblr. It is especially curious as 1 The blogs aren't monetised in any way and 2 They generally aren't stuffed with links to the media brand's mothership.

So why the proliferation of Tumblr media blogs?

1 Tumblr is oh so hip. Blogging platforms haven't been cool for a while, Tumblr has attracted a young, creative and quite probably very influential audience.

2 Tumblr gives media brands a chance to engage with their fans on more neutral territory - There's a real community in Tumblr, more so than its rival of sorts Posterous. Tumblr users have welcomed media brands' recognition of their space on the web and have been forthcoming in reading the blogs and engaging with the owners.

3 The Tumblr blogs take readers behind the scenes - The blogs show images of news rooms, content that didn't make the main mag/website, informal videos of staff. If you are a media junkie this stuff is compelling.

4 The blogs are image and video lead - Last week Nick Denton was talking about how he feels that video and images are the future of blogging, perhaps more than words. Tumblr blogs look great as they tend to be designed to make the most of striking images. Media companies create a lot of images and Tumblr is the perfect place for them.

Personally I am not entirely sure how long the trend will last. Tumblr is not the new Twitter, and besides there is a strong argument for media companies placing that ancillary content on a site where millions could see it - Facebook. It is however clearly a trend to keep an eye on.

Incidentally I searched in vain for brands doing anything interesting on Tumblr. Which is odd because the Sutro team has got some great ideas for branded Tumblr blogs. If you are a brand who want to experiment with Sutro Digital in this space give me a shout. Check out the Sutro site sutrodigital.com

via paidcontent.co.uk

Interesting stuff from Paid Content http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-social-nets-pulled-cpms-down-by-18-perce... on how social networks (well Facebook with a bit of MySpace) have pulled down the CPMs (amount advertisers pay per 1000 views) to new record low levels.

At the same time the blog points out that ad spend has dropped in the first part of this year and media is already experiencing a double dip recession.

For me this underlines a few things

1 Social media is seriously harming online media. If social media didn't exist then online media would command much higher CPMs.

2 That you can't put the genie back in the bottle - Media companies have just got to work with this and accept that Facebook et al will keep CPMs down over the next few years.

3 However there may be an upside one day - If brands begin to start valuing online media once again. I don't really think this will happen until we see new a new media properly emerge with many print titles dying or shifting completely online and brands recognising that the new wave of blogs and websites that have grown in the last few years have influential and important audiences.

Still as David puts it on PC

But there’s still hope for web publishers looking to blunt Facebook’s impact on CPMs. The social net doesn’t want to challenge major publishers directly on premium display and has in fact avoided deploying any of the larger display ads that have captured sites’ attention since the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Online Publishers Association began promoting new standard formats last year. Publishers insist that offering a larger, uniform display format for advertisers will inspire greater creativity.

The thinking goes that in turn, more creativity will spur greater ad spend. That may actually be happening right now. But overall, it will have a limited affect against the never-ending flow of inventory from social nets and the laws of supply and demand that sites like Facebook will continue to exert on advertisers’ finite ad budgets.

Finally I should add that Anorak.co.uk and whoateallthepies.tv did a record breaking one million page impressions over the weekend. If the ad sales CPM was $3 that would be $3000 (or rather $9000 as there are three ad positions). The reality is that the real figure will be an awful lot less than that

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5 Oct 2010

Why media brands have gone crazy for blogging platform Tumblr

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12 Jul 2010

Is Facebook harming online media/blog advertising?

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