Imgur adds native promoted posts with Kevel's APIs
The popular online community monetizes while keeping its users happy.
20x+
Higher CPMs vs banner ads
<100ms
Average response time
9x
Faster launch vs from scratch
What Imgur Wanted
Imgur is an online image sharing community, with over 300M monthly pageviews and have tens of millions of app downloads.
As they grew, Imgur realized they had an untapped revenue opportunity: native promoted posts, like those on Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately, no out-of-the-box ad server could provide the flexibility they needed, and they didn't have the time or resources to build the ad platform entirely from scratch.
So Imgur turned to Kevel's ad serving APIs. They outsourced the complicated, commoditized parts of ad serving to Kevel — like reporting, targeting, and decisioning — and instead focused their efforts on ad strategy, user feedback, and front-end work.
Within a few weeks, Imgur had launched a high-margin native ad product that their users not only didn't mind, but actually enjoyed!
Advertisers can pay to promote curated, user-first promoted posts
These promoted posts flow nicely in the user experience and share characteristics with organic posts: they are visual, have playful content, can be up/down voted, and can be commented on.
Outcome:
- These ads draw 20x+ CPMs as compared to programmatic banner ads
- Advertisers pay premiums for these engaging ad units
- First-party-data targeting ensures relevance
Integration with Kevel's APIs was fast - and their flexible tools allow us to continually test and improve our native ad units.
Senior DevOps Engineer, Imgur
Full backend, server-side integration
All of the Kevel-powered promoted posts are white-labeled and the decisions are requested server-side — giving Imgur total control over how the promotions are displayed.
Outcome:
- Kevel-powered ads look just like standard user-generated posts
- Ad response times as low as 50ms, even at scale
- Imgur built this bespoke, complex platform in just weeks
curl -H 'Content-Type:application/json' \
-X POST \
-d '{"placements":[{
"divName":"div1",
"networkId":23,
"siteId":667480,
"adTypes":[5]}],
"user":{"key":"abc"}}' \
\
https://e-23.adzerk.net/api/v2{ "user": { "key": "abc" },
"decisions": {
"div1": {
"adID": 1234567,
"creativeID": 7654321,
"flightID": 9876543,
"campaignID": 3456789,
"clickURL": "https://e-123.kevel.co...",
"imageURL": "https://e-123.kevel.co...",
"height": 250,
"width": 300,
...
}
}
}
Automation made everyone happier
Imgur employs Kevel's UI and Management APIs to automate the start/end dates of campaigns, as well as specify pacing and caps - ensuring that their advertisers don't go over budgets.
Outcome:
- 90% reduction in ad set-up times
- Makes forecasting and budgeting easier
Users actually like these ads
The ad units are well-received by Imgur's user community. Given that the promoted posts provide value and match Imgur's tone, commenters treat the post like they would any other.
Our promoted posts are a competitive differentiator, and Kevel provided the plumbing for us to launch them quickly.
Senior DevOps Engineer, Imgur