Tumblr Looks for Gold in Hollywood Hills, Hires First Director of Media

The Tumblr logo is displayed at Nasdaq, Thursday, July 11, 2013 in New York. The company has appointed a director of media to boost its entertainment revenue.

Image: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Tumblr has hired its first director of media in a bid to tap the deep pockets of Hollywood's marketers.

Sima Sistani, who recently led the mobile growth division at Yahoo, has been appointed to the newly created position at Tumblr in hopes that the blogging platform can attract entertainment dollars, which have proven surprisingly difficult to do in the digital realm.

Sistani will not be the only fresh face representing a social network to entertainment marketers. Facebook recently hired a head of entertainment partnerships, and Twitter hired away a Google employee to take on the role of director of entertainment industry sales.

While Twitter may be the go-to social network for celebrities to communicate with fans, Tumblr has also attracted attention for notable names who are active on the platform, like Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Anthony Bourdain.

The appointment of Sistani is one of the more prominent additions since Yahoo bought the blogging platform for about $1.1 billion.

Since the acquisition, Tumblr has suffered the departure of various executives. In Yahoo's most recent earnings report, Tumblr was not mentioned aside from Yahoo's corporate blog.

Tumblr has also seen a sharp decline in comScore user growth.

If Sistani is to help Tumblr become the media platform that Yahoo had hoped, Hollywood might be a good place to start.

Entertainment marketing represents a major piece of the larger advertising pie that Internet companies have yet to tap. While Internet advertising has matured in recent years and begun to attract larger ad spends, entertainment dollars tend to stay with traditional outlets.

The motion picture industry alone spent $3.2 billion on ads in 2012, but a whopping 86.5% of that went to television, according to Adweek. To make matters worse, Internet spending (2% of total ad spend) actually falls behind newspapers (6%) and outdoor ads (3%), edging out radio and magazines to avoid last place.

These numbers are far more skewed than the total ad spending split between mediums. Television accounted for 39% compared to 22% of the total ad industry in 2012, according to eMarketer.

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