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"Last year was a pivotal one for Tumblr. The blogging network, which now has 170 million monthly visitors, for the first time began running ads last year.\nCEO David Karp, who had famously stated the company was \"pretty opposed to advertising. It really turns our stomachs,\" has reconsidered his stance. However, Karp maintains that for advertising to work on Tumblr, it has to have some creative merit. \nHe pointed to a recent Ford Lincoln campaign as an example of the sort of Tumblr-approved work he's looking for. Rather than the cliched beauty shots of the new model silhouetted against a sunset or sweeping around a tight corner, the campaign features vintage Lincolns in black and white. While Karp declined to discuss what kind of revenues Tumblr is making off advertising so far (a recent report pegged the company's 2012 revenues at $13 million), he did offer a few hints about Tumblr's direction this year. Mobile ad products, for instance, seem to be on the horizon as is a greater emphasis on search.\nThe former would seem to be a pressing issue for Tumbler. Karp, who spoke at a Social Media Week event at Ogilvy on Wednesday, says that by late 2013 or early 2014, most of Tumblr's traffic will come from mobile.  \nKarp discussed his advertising philosophy, the mobile transition and other topics with Mashable this week. Below are some excerpts:\nMashable: The ad products rolled out last year. How is it going?\nDavid Karp: So we spent the better part of the first half of last year really leading up to those ad products and really spending a lot of time with people in the industry to get the story right, to really refine how we were describing these tools and what the challenge was posed to the most creative people in the industry. What was missing on online advertising was what we really wanted to see on Tumblr \u2014 real creative advertising and storytelling.\nMashable: Do you have veto power? Can you say I didn't like that ad because it wasn't creative enough?\nDK: We do. And sometimes it's not just that it's not creative. Tumblr is a pretty wide open canvas, but at the same time there are certain things that sometimes they feel slightly out of place whether it's too much like an advertisement, like a straight up flashing a logo type of advertisement which is just not the kind of stuff that performs well on Tumblr or just content-wise it's not designed in such a way...in the same way that a 30-minute TV show, if you embed that inside of Tumblr, it's not going to perform nearly as well as the punchy, 2-minute mini documentary or the punchy animation or illustration, whatever it is. We give guidance on what's going to perform well and for the most part, these guys really appreciate that feedback.\nMashable: Do you consider what you're doing 'Native Advertising'? What do you think of that term?\nDK: I absolutely think it's native advertising. It's important to qualify that with native inside Tumblr is real creative content. Tumblr is a really creative platform. It's not a social platform, it's not a chat platform, it's not an embed, compartmentalized experience. It's about people come here really hungry for content and if you can create a piece of content that's got a marketing message behind it, even if it's branded content, if you show up with great content that surprises people, inspires people, moves people, challenges people, whatever it is, that can be hugely successful inside Tumblr. It can get a hugely positive reaction.\nMashable: Have any members of the community objected to advertising on Tumblr on principle?\nDK: I'm sure you can find somebody on some corner of Tumblr who is down on advertising and would rather pay for Tumblr. I think people have been delighted to see how thoughtful and quality the advertising has been on Tumblr. Part of the reason that we were really sounding the drums about a future advertising platform a few years ago before we really had anything to show for it. That was the thing. We introduced ad products and very quickly after we started to get some of those ads into circulation so people could see this wasn't a yucky big change for Tumblr. This wasn't this precious experience that was going to be wrapped in advertising. People were worried. We were using YouTube very happily for six or seven years before it started being interrupted by shit floating on top \u2014 sorry, I shouldn't say 'shit,' \u2014 marketing messages covering up this video I'm trying to watch, covering up the titles, making me pause to watch something else before I see what I want to watch. So I think people were unsure about what this meant for Tumblr so we wanted to very quickly move to start to roll it out so people could see this is nothing scary, nothing to worry about.\nMashable: At what point will Tumblr's mobile traffic overtake its desktop traffic?\nDK: That's going to be either later this year or early next year cause it's accelerating. We're seeing 3X the growth on mobile vs. desktop.\nMashable: Is it more difficult to monetize on mobile?\nDK: I don't think so. I mean, we haven't rolled those products out yet but we certainly will be. The thesis for us is so long as Tumblr is a media network, so long as people are coming her for content, as long as our advertising is built on top of the same atomic elements \u2014 I mean on Tumblr there are no special brand pages, there are no Sponsored Stories. There are blogs and there are posts. So as long as there are those elements and our mobile apps are getting better and better at displaying those atomic elements...The great thing is the stuff that looks great on Tumblr [on desktop], the ads use the same format. So if you create great content for Tumblr, so long as people are coming to Tumblr hungry for content, we should be able to inject advertisements there in a way that's really not distruptive and not interruptive.\nImage via Ben Gabbe/Getty Images for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/tumblr-mobile-traffic/>