Tumblr wants its users to create the ads that they’ll see

Tumblr’s community may not be palatable to some, but its creative and occasionally amusing feed does have a certain draw to it that ends up getting me stuck on the website for hours at a time. The company doesn’t want to ruin that draw when it starts putting ads on your feed, which is why the company has turned to the community itself to create the ads that it will display. Pretty clever. 

Tumblr’s beautiful, GIF-filled feed is what keeps bringing visitors back, and it wants to make sure the feed stays that way even as brands begin to fill it with ads. To that end, it’s announcing the formal launch of what it’s calling the Creatrs Network, a curated group of artists who excel on Tumblr and can help brands make ads that people actually like. Tumblr says that it’s been running tests with this network for the past year and has already used it to run successful campaigns with Axe, Gap, and Olay, among others. Rather than running ads that look like they could be plastered up on a billboard, Tumblr is hoping that brands will tap its network to find someone who actually knows what works on Tumblr. That’s probably going to be GIFs, but it’s also going to be GIFs that are composed in a way that they feel like something you’d want to share. Tumblr really wants the ads to fit in as though they were any of piece of art — it even says that artists will receive credit and links back to their page (in addition to actual payment for their work).