The crowdsourced ad agency: What Tumblr's Creatrs Network solves and what it doesn't
Tumblr’s recent announcement that it will launch the Creatrs Network, which will pair brands with select Tumblr users to create promotional content, is emblematic of the sweeping changes that are transforming the digital creative landscape.
Tumblr's Creatrs Network
The digital revolution has changed the way consumers view and advertisers produce creative content. The huge proliferation of media and devices that’s occurred over the last 10 years has made the competition for consumers’ attention fiercer than ever. Mornings with Dear Abby and evenings with Walter Cronkite are a thing of the past (along with the 30 per cent share).
Advertisers are looking for new ways to stand out from the crowd. Largely, these approaches have fallen in one of two schools. On the one hand, there’s the world of highly customised creative; on the other hand is the burgeoning world of modular, automated creative – so-called programmatic creative.
The launch of Creatrs, a cost-effective new spin on native ads, falls squarely in the first camp. Native ads have shown promise in helping advertisers connect with their consumers. They’re one-off units that are designed to blend into the surrounding content, a novel variation on a tried and true strategy – find where your biggest audience is and build your creative around that. We’ve seen some cool executions, like Buzzfeed’s work for the HBO series Game of Thrones or Thrillist’s work with GE to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.
The growth of the format, however, has been hampered by high costs. The New York Times, for example, reportedly charges advertisers $25,000 to $200,000 in production fees alone for its native ads. And that’s just one publisher! To scale a native campaign across multiple publications would, in many cases, be cost prohibitive for advertisers.
In contrast, by essentially crowdsourcing the creation of ads from among its user base, Tumblr will likely offer a far more cost effective solution. Plus, there’s the opportunity to supposedly scale that content across a variety of Yahoo properties an added bonus for any advertiser.
Stepping away from highly customised creative, there’s the programmatic approach, which uses data-driven technologies to automate the building, customising and delivery of creative. It’s the creative analogue to programmatic media, once a niche product for the selling of remnant inventory and now a near ubiquitous channel –witness AOL’s restructuring of its ad sales team to focus on programmatic or Mondelez's programmatic purchase of Super Bowl ad space.
As opposed to focusing on highly customised, one-off executions, programmatic creative focuses on quality at scale. It’s about using technology to automate the creation of engaging online creative, allowing advertisers to create large volumes of ads while ensuring that each ad appeals to the individual user.
It allows advertisers to, at minimal cost, make ads more personalised, more relevant, more interesting, more informative – and scale those ads across multiple media properties. It recognises that consumers’ tastes are fickle – today’s tent pole might be tomorrow’s punch line – and their attentions are divided.
Therefore, rather than focusing on a single, elaborate execution, programmatic creative looks to deliver quality ads anywhere the consumer goes – something that Tumblr’s new Creatrs Network won’t be able to achieve.
In the end, one should think of the difference between these two schools as the difference between bespoke suits and made-to-measure. Each has its time and its place. Tumblr’s Creatrs Network is a flashy one-off – a cool way to connect with Tumblr’s audience – but it won’t be able to compete with scalable and far-reaching capabilities of programmatic creative.
Ben Kartzman is CEO and founder of Spongecell