The Voice is first on the list, especially following last year's success when the two collaborated on the season finale

Oct 20, 2014 14:16 GMT  ·  By

Tumblr is getting more and more involved with TV shows in order to expand its reach to new audiences and that’s a good move for the company.

The New York Times points out that during the finale performance of NBC’s The Voice Season 6, animated illustrations inspired by the lyrics of the song “Team” by Lorde appeared on screen. They were created by Cindy Sue, an artist that’s extremely popular on Tumblr, the blogging platform Yahoo bought not too long ago.

Since then, Tumblr had gotten even more involved with the TV show and a series of bloggers were invited backstage on the Voice set, which could translate into a huge launching platform for these individuals, while also putting the spotlight on Tumblr as a platform.

Audrey Morrissey, executive producer at The Voice, considers Tumblr to be a very interesting piece of the puzzle for the show’s fans. “Facebook and Twitter are very immediate, but Tumblr is something they sort of take in and then create something about the show at times other than when the show is happening,” she said.

David Karp, the young Tumblr founder and CEO, says that it makes sense for Tumblr to be a partner for the TV network, especially in an era when people watch TV on demand and spend a lot of time doing marathons of their favorite shows on services such as Netflix.

“They have a tremendous reach, but they are limited to the 60-minute spot and then the show goes dark. That is a bummer. This is an opportunity for them to bring their remarkable content to their fans 24/7,” Karp said.

Google for Tumblr, good for Yahoo

If the relationship between Tumblr and NBC proves to be successful, then things could be looking up for Yahoo too. After paying $1.1 billion for Tumblr last year, investors are yet to see where the success of the acquisition lies.

In the months that have passed ever since, Yahoo has kept Tumblr’s finances a secret, avoiding to add its numbers to the greater pot. Even so, research firm eMarketer has estimated that Tumblr has a growth rate of 24 percent, which is much faster than its social–sharing competitors, including Pinterest and Instagram.

Despite these encouraging results, the audience of Tumblr is relatively low. The site has about 17 million registered users, while Pinterest, the next one up, has some 40 million.

Investors are becoming impatient about Yahoo. Jeffrey Smith or Starboard Value sent Yahoo a letter a few weeks back in which the company’s investment strategy is criticized heavily because it doesn’t return value. He went even further, telling the company to find a way to monetize the investment in Alibaba and to sell out to AOL.

Tumblr was never meant to be an investment that would make Yahoo a fortune, at least not from the get-go. The company’s leadership has put the foot down on several issues, refusing to bend to the pressure of adding in advertisements and so on. Marissa Mayer was hoping, however, that the deal would attract some of the younger Tumblr users to Yahoo’s other sites and, therefore, to the ad-laced pages.