Shortly after announcing their new iPhone app at SXSW Interactive, StumbleUpon launched a new advertising platform called Paid Discovery which delivers “an engaged target audience directly” to advertisers without clicking through ads or links.
In their launch announcement, they repeated the phrase, “100% engagement, 100% of the time.”
Paid Discovery comes in three sizes- Light (5 center per “engaged” visitor), Standard (10 cents) and Premium (25 cents).
Light is targeted by interest and location and offers basic reporting. Standard is given priority serving in content streams, the ability to target specific demographics and devices and reports site performance, traffic analysis, website quality scores, visitor data and offers Google Analytics integration. Premium offers all that but is guaranteed top serving priority in content stream.
Users can rate the ads just as they can standard content, and more “up votes” can lead to free traffic for advertisers, so quality advertising that targets the web savvy over the web stupid will triumph on this platform.
“Millions of influencers are using StumbleUpon to discover the best of the web and mobile,” StumbleUpon said. “By hitting a button in their browsers or on their mobile device, StumbleUpon users are directed through a stream of sites that reflect their interests and that have been recommended by friends.”
In steps real estate brokers
While we don’t necessarily agree that StumbleUpon users are exclusively influencers, it is a space that is highly ignored by the real estate which is good news for brokers- it is populated by consumers rather than the other ad networks primarily saturated by Realtors.
It is unclear how StumbleUpon users will ultimately react to being advertised to as they discover new content and if they will feel tricked or if they will even notice, but we have to ask how long it will take for the big box brokers like Keller Williams or RE/MAX to get in on the ad network and which options the brokers will choose.
Who will cheap out versus who will invest will be an interesting study in how each brand values web consumers.
