When Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp received a query two years ago what he thought about display ads, he said they turn his stomach. Today, he is eating a healthy slice of humble pie as the phenomenally successful blogging platform plans to sell ad display units to advertisers.

Tumblr – Image via Crunchbase

The ads, which will appear on the blogging platform’s dashboard, will be a first for the blogging platform that has so far survived without ads. Showing on the “Featured” section of the dashboard, CEO Karp said these ads would make a lot of sense because that section alone sees 120,000 impressions every day.

Speaking at Ad Age Digital Conference in New York, Karp said advertisers would be able to pay for space beginning May 2. The blogging platform has been growing at an astounding rate ad this may be what has elicited the change in heart as the huge number of impressions presents real monetary value when utilized as advertising real estate. Citing this tremendous growth, Karp said, “We have about 4.5 billion impressions a week. There’s value in that to advertisers…”

Tumblr has in deed grown beyond the expectations of many and currently hosts some 52 million blogs, which have generated 21 billion posts, and continues to grow at a rate of some 50 million posts per day. With this massive traffic, it only makes sense for the management to look for ways to leverage this for revenue generation. The company currently charges $1 for promoted blogs while there is the prospect of using a service such as Google AdSense to serve contextual ads to blog users.

About Daniel Mbure

Daniel is a writer, strategist and serial tech entrepreneur. Follow Daniel on Twitter @thespianic