Does Tumblr Allow Advertising?

Terms of Service

There's no statement in Tumblr's terms of service that prohibits ads, unless you're using ads to spread malware, inserting ads on other user's blogs or creating your blog exclusively to generate ad-based income. As long as you aren't aren't using your Tumblr blog to deceive, placing an ad or two on your personal blog is acceptable.

Advertising on Your Blog

Any sort of advertisement is allowed on your blog, so long as it doesn't violate Tumblr's content terms. The type of content not allowed includes hate speech, harm to minors, promotion of self-harm and gory content. If you're just getting started, you might consider using the Google AdSense service to include ads on your blog. How-to Geek offers a tutorial on how to include advertising with AdSense on your Tumblr blog (link in Resources).

Advertisements in Posts

While you can certainly use your posts to promote your own products, inserting ads into posts is not allowed. Tumblr's terms of use prohibits the use of code in posts that inserts unwanted ads on people's posts. Tumblr's primary form of sharing is reblogging posts. If you insert an ad in your posts, then anyone who shares that post will end up with the ad on their blog as well. As such, users are less likely to share your posts, should you decide to ignore to terms of use and insert ads into your content.

Advertising on Tumblr

If you're interested in advertising your own content on Tumblr, highlighted posts are a good place to start. Highlighted posts cost a dollar and make your post more prominent on the dashboard by adding a sticker. Blogs that pay to be seen on the Tumblr Spotlight are generally corporate-run blogs. For instance, as part of the promotion for The Hunger Games film, Lionsgate paid to have one of its blogs promoted on Tumblr Spotlight.