StumbleUpon Advertising

Paid Discovery is StumbleUpon’s ad system. StumbleUpon’s platform lets users surf the web by Stumbling to sites that match their interests, simply by hitting a button on their browser or mobile device. With Paid Discovery, an advertiser’s URL (website, video, etc.) becomes part of that stream.

Up to 5% of all stumbles are reserved for Paid Discovery where the advertisers directly insert their web page into the user experience. This means the audience lands directly on their web pages, videos, and photos. Users can also provide feedback (thumbs up / thumbs down) on this content.

Since Paid Discovery sends visitors directly to the advertiser’s page, there’s no need to create an ad; the advertiser’s entire web page is the ad. When an ad is delivered a user, a green icon or “Sponsored” will appear in the toolbar or mobile app, denoting a paid stumble. StumbleUpon doesn’t serve typical display ad formats, such as pop-ups/interstitials, banners, etc.

Advertisers have different options for how quickly and how many users they can reach with their content, depending on their marketing objectives. Serving priority dictates the order with which their web page is considered for placement, based on available inventory.

Su.pr

In March 2009, StumbleUpon launched Su.pr, a URL shortening service. It is primarily used to link to Twitter and Facebook statuses and updates. This service is similar to that of bit.ly and TinyURL. From March through May 2009, the su.pr service was only available to people who had received an invite code, but it is now available to all StumbleUpon users.

StumbleThru

In April 2007, StumbleUpon launched the StumbleThru service, allowing users of the toolbar to stumble within sites such as YouTube,The Onion, Public Broadcasting Service and Wikipedia. According to the announcement of the feature, StumbleUpon plans on adding additional Web sites in the future.

As of June 13, 2010, sites using StumbleThru include BBC.com, Blogger, Break.com, CNN.com, Collegehumor, Flickr.com, FunnyorDie.com, Howstuffworks.com, HuffingtonPost.com, Metacafe.com, Pbs.org, PhysOrg, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, The Onion, Wikipedia, Wired.com, Wordpress, and YouTube.

The StumbleThru service allows registered users to stumble on specific sites like the ones listed above, rather than the entire Web.

StumbleUpon Video

On December 13, 2006, StumbleUpon launched their StumbleVideo site at http://video.stumbleupon.com/. The new site allows users without a toolbar to "stumble" through all the videos that toolbar users have submitted and rate them using an Ajax interface. The site currently aggregates videos from CollegeHumor, DailyMotion, FunnyOrDie, Google, MetaCafe, MySpace, Vimeo and YouTube.

StumbleUpon launched a version of StumbleVideo for the Internet Channel Web browser that runs on the Wii console on February 12, 2007. This version of StumbleVideo is optimized for the Wii's smaller screen resolution and offers similar functionality to that of the original version.

StumbleUpon (How it works)

StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering (an automated process combining human opinions with machine learning of personal preference) to create virtual communities of like-minded Web surfers. Rating Web sites update a personal profile (a blog-style record of rated sites) and generate peer networks of Web surfers linked by common interest. These social networks coordinate the distribution of Web content, so that users "stumble upon" pages explicitly recommended by friends and peers. Giving a site a thumbs up results in the site being placed under the user's "favorites". Furthermore, users have the ability to stumble their personal interests like "History" or "Games".

Users rate a site by giving it a thumbs up, thumbs down selection on the StumbleUpon toolbar, and can optionally leave additional commentary on the site's review page, which also appears on the user's blog. This social content discovery approach automates the "word-of-mouth" referral of peer-approved Web sites and simplifies Web navigation.

In the settings section of Stumbleupon you can further filter the types of webpages you may come across. There are interest filters which allow you to include only content for all ages, R rated content, or X rated content. There are also content filters in which you can choose to allow stumbles with audio, video, flash, images, and PDF's.

On October 24, 2011, StumbleUpon deleted years worth of user-generated content, and removed HTML blogging, standalone blog posts, and photoblogging capabilities. Additionally, all previous blog posts were converted from HTML to plain text, and all photos were deleted from previous blog posts. StumbleUpon stated, "Over time, we’ve come to realize that we are not able to support and scale a blogging platform, in addition to our recommendation engine."

Content that is "stumbled upon" is informed by user's stated preferences, the thumbs up and down of their friends, as well as demographic information.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.

Toolbar versions exist for Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer, but StumbleUpon also works with some independent Mozilla-based browsers. It also works with Safari.

Native mobile StumbleUpon apps exist for iOS, Android, and the Amazon Appstore.