Tumblr: The Social Media E-Commerce Powerhouse?

As it turns out, when it comes to marketing value for retailers, name recognition isn’t everything. It seems in the case of the niche social media site Tumblr it seems less can be more–as long as the less doesn’t refer to money.  According to Adobe’s Digital Inly dex , Tumblr’s young and urban user base is also somewhat richer on average than the bases of their more well known competition.

The median household income of Tumblr’s users is $80,075.  That puts its very slightly ahead of Twitter’s average of $79,592 and widely ahead of Facebook’s average of  $70,124.  That bump income seems to be almost disproportionately connected to an increase in sales activity generated through interaction with the site.

The worth of a Tumblr referral to a retail site when translated into revenue per is $2.57 on tablets and 67 cents on smartphones, according to the latest Adobe Mobile Benchmark report.  That leads its nearest competitor Facebook by an average of a $1 per visit on a desktop and $.25 on a mobile device.

“Tumblr is small but mighty and offers retailers a visually stimulating environment,” said Tamara Gaffney, Adobe Digital Index’s principal analyst. “The fact that it produces the highest revenue per visit from mobile devices is likely due to its user base, which is skewed to young, trendy and well-educated urbanites with a greater affinity for online purchases and the disposable income to spend more.”