Most people probably haven’t heard of Imgur, if you have – Kudos! Having been dubbed the ‘last true internet culture’, it was originally set up as an image sharing website, similar to Photobucket. Imgur has gained some impressive user statistics of its own, hitting a covetable male dominated audience of 150 million active monthly users.
With 82% of Imgur’s 150 million strong user base spending more than 3 hours per week on the channel, the website is taking a step towards diversifying their advertising offerings. In 2015 they hired Steve Patrizi (he who led native advertising on Pinterest and LinkedIn’s marketing solutions platform.) and they are now developing native advertising.
The Imgur community is a tough nut to crack. With an estimated 70-80% of their userbase being in the male 18-34 bracket, these users are not easily sold on a product. In fact most users employ some form of ad blocking software, preventing the currently-in-use banner ads from ever reaching them.
Imgur is not for the faint hearted. In amongst the cat videos and bizarre memes, you will find stories of personal struggle and unfiltered political opinions. An individual can post on any subject they wish and submit it to the cloud in the hope of upvotes and comments. High amounts of upvotes drive a post towards the front page of the site – the holy grail, as it were.
Reaching the front page is no mean feat. In November 2015 a young dancer was diagnosed with the genetic disorder Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) through a viral post. A 15 year old author made it to the Amazon Category Bestseller list with a free giveaway. There was even a successful Imgur camp meet-up last year!
Imgur have been busy trialling native ads with brands such as Ebay in order to develop the advertising platform. Native ads are a type of advertising that sit naturally within the platform as if they were the content from a regular user. The trick with Imgur (as with all social media advertising) is to make it worth an upvote! To give the users something engaging and emotive to hit those billion per day page views. That’s right, billion.
These are users that may ignore the likes of Facebook and Twitter advertising but with the right content, may give your product/service a closer look.
The option has not yet been released for everyone, but you can register your interest here.
Kate Tyler is the founder of Shake Social and our long time social media expert. A regular speaker at events, Kate offers consultancy and training on a range of digital marketing topics, in particular safeguarding and using social media in an educational setting.