Visa, however, may be the first example of another way to promote.

Different Approach to Paid Search

As part of their Olympic sponsorship, Visa has created a Tumblr page which is functioning as the main content hub for all things Olympics. The page links to all other social accounts and is the place Visa is driving traffic to with all of their paid search, both in Google and the Yahoo Bing Network.

Tumblr, a micro-blogging site, was purchased last spring by Yahoo to fill the gap of a social networking and communications hub which the company previously lacked. It is another easy platform for users to create content and has more young adults and mobile users to contrast with Yahoo’s older user base.

So what, you ask? Well, we will have to stay tuned, but Visa’s use of Tumblr as a content hub could be an opening for others to explore this as an option. Tumblr could end up as Yahoo’s Google+, where creating more content within the platform would give more weight in Yahoo search, much like having a Google+ page has become important for Google search. We are largely speculating here, but with all the changes and updates Yahoo is working on we’ll be interested to see if this takes hold with other brands. There has also been mention of integrating ads into the Tumblr dashboard which could be an added benefit to brands if user growth continues.

So is Visa onto something? Maybe, maybe not, but the Tumblr page sure looks good and is an easy way to link all their accounts and content to one place.

What do you think about Visa’s paid search tactic? Do you think the use of Tumblr could affect Yahoo search?