anonsally:

aivley:

[snipped]

1. There is a way to block all sponsored posts by blocking the $ symbol on them. But I don’t remember how to do that and it certainly won’t work forever.

Using Tumblr Savior, I think you can blacklist sponsored_badge_icon ?

2. I don’t understand their algorithm for handing out these ads. I’ve had neither of the horror movies (so far…) but I did have vh1’s Lets-Objectify-Women ad.

My best guess is, there is no algorithm at all. They just have a few ads and they show up at random, with no relation at all to what is on your blog or dash.

3. Mostly I’m frustrated because tumblr could have come up with really cool ways to do advertising* but instead they chose the absolute most boring and, incidentally, the one that is the least consumer friendly.

Exactly.

4. I understand if you choose to leave but I will miss you.

That was addressed to lies, and I want to echo the sentiment.

*For instance:

 – have us choose one “ad-blog” to follow per 100 regular blogs. (this would be a pretty great way to do it i think.)

 – have us select a classification rating (eg G, PG, M) and/or the ability to block certain topics (like tags!) like: suicide, nudity… etc??

 – have us select, from a list, several topics of ads.

I like these ideas for other ways they could handle advertising that would be more friendly. So, signal boosting.

Thank all of you who’ve been willing to think and post about possible solutions for this.

Just to clarify, I think I’ve almost always seen the horror movie sponsored posts on the Tumblr iPad app, rather than when browsing Tumblr on my computer. I believe sponsored posts were introduced first on the app, before they ever appeared on the website, and it appears that sponsored posts are still more intrusively implemented (with more ads/worse ads) on the app. I think that was true even before I started using Tumblr Savior in an effort to block the sponsored posts when viewing the website (which I’ve now done).

I don’t know if the ads being worse on the app is intentional, or if it’s just a side-effect of the development pipeline for the app working differently than the one for the website. Having worked on development teams that were delivering both app-based and web-based interfaces, it wouldn’t surprise me if updating the app takes substantially longer than updating the website, which could mean that even if Tumblr chose to respond to the complaints there might be delays before any changes filtered down to the app (or they might choose to just leave the app with the old behavior, even if they backed off from running the horror movie sponsored posts on the website).

Besides technical issues, there could be business issues involved as well. For example, it might be that Tumblr entered into a sales agreement that commits them to running a certain amount of horror movie advertising. Even if a negative response from their users made them decide that they didn’t want to continue running the ads, there might be a big difference for them between letting the current agreement expire without renewing it, versus canceling it in mid-stream. I could see that being a factor in the noncommittal responses they’ve been making to the complaints.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/56031013920.

Tags: sponsored posts, untagged horror gifs, and other things that suck.

This entry was posted by jbc on Saturday, July 20th, 2013 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.