Tumblr must be doing something right. After an experimental ad push in 2012, the social network reportedly raked in $13M in revenue, and is hoping for $100M total in 2013, according to Forbes.
“The growth we’ve seen in the last year just totally overshadows everything that came before it,” says CEO David Karp. “To be honest, it’s a place I never thought we’d be.”
A $13M total may not sound like much, and a $100M goal may sound unseemly, but you’ll recall that Tumblr didn’t have much by way of revenue or revenue strategy prior to 2012, when they were named one of Quantcast’s 10 most-trafficked websites in the US.
Ad products in 2012 for Tumblr included Highlighted Posts (introduced in Feb.), Pinned Posts, Radar, and a premium analytics tool for brands that costs roughly $500 each month.
Still, Tumblr isn’t out of the woods yet. “I really like David, but he’s got a brutal year ahead,” says Gawker Media owner Nick Denton. “The pressure on Internet media companies to deliver revenues is going way, way up.”
Tumblr will continue its new revenue push, but in the meantime, the social network isn’t exactly hurting for cash. It has raised $125M in funding as of this posting, and CEO David Karp said that the company has kept most of that cash. To put things in perspective, Tumblr spent about $25M to simply keep the lights on in 2012, and expects to spend roughly $40M on operations in 2013.
You can read the entire Forbes profile on David Karp and Tumblr here.
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