Tumblr is taking a page from Facebook and rolling out video advertising for marketers who want their ads to autoplay in Tumblr feeds.
The announcement comes on the heels of an update to Tumblr’s video player last week, which included autoplay and looping videos, and support for Instagram and Vine. However, marketers will be unable to cross-post Instagram and Vine videos as advertisements to Tumblr, AdAge reports.
The company is rolling out the video ads with 10 initial partners including JC Penny, Hulu, Lexus and Universal, and will be widely available in mid-November. Tumblr will now allow marketers to pay for ads per view.
Prior to today’s announcement, video ads were available on Tumblr, but such videos didn’t automatically start to play in the dashboard.
Like Facebook, Tumblr’s auto-play ads are muted by default, and viewers can tap to play. Web users will be able to pop out the video player to keep scrolling through their dashboard while playing the video.
Facebook released its own auto-play video ads earlier this year, but unlike Facebook users, people on Tumblr are accustomed to watching looping videos in the form of GIFs that fill up their feeds. Adding autoplay video ads might not be as much of shock to the Tumblr dashboard as it was to the news feed.
Lead photo by Golden Owl on Flickr
