Dive Brief:

• After struggling with a lack of support after being acquired by Yahoo in May 2013, Tumblr is taking control of its future with a reboot of its advertising business, Marketing Land reported.
• Tumblr is putting its own ad sales team in place, and making a major change in that it will no longer require advertising brands have a Tumblr blog before running ad campaigns.
• "While we experienced a slower ramp in monetization than we initially expected, we’ve seen continued growth across all areas of the business, including revenue, users, and engagement," a Tumblr spokesperson told Marketing Land.

Dive Insight:

Competition among social media platforms has grown dramatically in the past years and companies are having to act quickly and carefully to lure users and advertisers. 

Tumblr was expected to hit $100 million in revenue last year. That didn’t happen. However, "since the acquisition, Tumblr has introduced a number of innovative ad products to maximize value for our advertisers and best meet their needs,” the same Tumblr spokesperson said. "To further support these efforts moving forward, we have returned to a Tumblr-dedicated direct sales team."

After the Yahoo acquisition, Tumblr never really received support for ad sales, a role Yahoo took over early last year.

Parent-company Yahoo has undergone a rough year on a corporate level overall, but also specifically within its ad business. Last August it ran malware infected ads for a week in banner across its websites, and early this year it faced charges that its programmatic video ad platform was mostly fraudulent.