StumbleUpon's Advertising Platform Gains Momentum

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- StumbleUpon, a discovery engine, today announced that its revamped advertising platform has experienced 20 percent growth in its number of users since March 2010. With nearly 2,000 active monthly customers running about 3,000 campaigns daily, StumbleUpon helps advertisers share relevant content with their targeted demographics.

"Brand marketers and advertisers have recognized that StumbleUpon Ads can attract highly targeted audiences to their web content quickly and cost-effectively," said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon founder and CEO. "We're able to match each sponsored page to the users most likely to enjoy it by taking into account their expressed preferences as well as the interest-level relationships between them and other users. This personalized approach results in over 70 percent of paid placements receiving a positive endorsement - which we call a 'thumb-up'- from viewers. No other interest-based ad platform so effectively connects advertisers to potential customers while delivering viral traffic to a like-minded audience."

As online advertising becomes more content-based and less intrusive, over 40,000 advertisers have leveraged StumbleUpon's ad platform to attract engaged and captive audiences. StumbleUpon's year-over-year ad inclusion rate has doubled and its number of daily active advertisers has increased approximately 30 percent.

One of those advertisers is the online personal finance service Mint.com, which has been using StumbleUpon Ads since 2008 to attract qualified traffic to their site and increase sign-ups. With StumbleUpon Ads, Mint.com has been able to accurately target people interested in personal finance management as well as tailor its landing pages to specific communities on StumbleUpon, driving organic traffic to its site.

"StumbleUpon Ads is the most cost-effective form of advertising that we have used, including pay-per-click advertising on a popular social networking site," said Stew Langille, VP of Marketing at Mint.com. "We've been very pleased with the high quality of traffic and conversion rates StumbleUpon provides, and have seen more than half of that traffic appear organically."

In addition, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board partnered with StumbleUpon to target potential customers and increase the virality of their campaigns. To gain the upper hand in the longstanding debate over which state has the best cheese, the board chose StumbleUpon's ad platform to promote its fun and interactive consumer site, GrilledCheeseAcademy.com. StumbleUpon's integrated approach enabled the board to reach an audience interested in food and cooking, and within two months achieved 176,000 website views through StumbleUpon, with an average time-on-site of three minutes for a total of 8,800 hours of engagement.

"StumbleUpon's Ad platform offered us the chance to share content from the Grilled Cheese Academy website with audiences that were relevant and engaged, which increased results beyond our traditional print marketing efforts," said Nick Newlin, Interactive Director for Shine Advertising, the agency that worked with the Wisconsin Board. "By leveraging StumbleUpon, we garnered twice the site visits and engagement rates expected for this campaign."

About StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon helps individuals discover and share interesting, relevant information personalized to each user's unique tastes and preferences. With over 15 billion Stumbles to date, over 10 million users and 600 million personalized recommendations per month, StumbleUpon is the leading way to discover great, peer-sourced content on the Internet. Over 50,000 unique URLs are indexed through StumbleUpon each day. More than 40,000 advertisers are using StumbleUpon to promote their products and services. Founded in 2001, StumbleUpon is based in San Francisco and backed by some of the same investors behind Google and Facebook. For more information, visit www.StumbleUpon.com. 

SOURCE StumbleUpon