StumbleUpon Engaging Marketers

In the land of online advertising, content based and less intrusive are two buzzwords. Enter StumbleUpon's ad platform, which leverages ads-as-content type marketing and now the company reports 20% growth since March. The platform is now running about 3,000 daily campaigns with 2,000 active users (monthly).

More than 40,000 advertisers have worked within the StumbleUpon ad interface to engage demographically targeted consumers through content based advertising.

"We're able to match each sponsored page to the users most likely to enjoy it by taking into account their expressed preferences as well as the interest-level relationships between them and other users," said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon founder and CEO. "This personalized approach results in over 70 percent of paid placements receiving a positive endorsement - which we call a 'thumb-up'- from viewers. No other interest-based ad platform so effectively connects advertisers to potential customers while delivering viral traffic to a like-minded audience."

According to the company, the year over year ad inclusion rate is now around 30%.

One advertiser, Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, used StumbleUpon's platform to engage consumers in their great grilled cheese debate. To help determine, through consumer input, on which state's cheese was the best, the brand used StumbleUpon to promote their Grilled Cheese Academy website. In two months, website views reached 176,000 with a total of 8,000 engagement hours (based on time spent on-site).

"By leveraging StumbleUpon, we garnered twice the site visits and engagement rates expected for this campaign," said Nick Newlin, Interactive Director for Shine Advertising, the agency working with Wisconsin Milk Marketing. "[The platform] offered us the chance to share content from the Grilled Cheese Academy...with audiences that were relevant and engaged, which increased results beyond...traditional...efforts."