Back in 1999, Yahoo spent $3.6B on GeoCities to consolidate 19M unique visitors per month within its portal. That was the industrial model at work: fewer, ever-growing competitors.

14 years later, Yahoo spends $1.1B on Tumblr, for what appears to be many of the same motivations: folding 29.2M unique visitors per month into its destination. (More useful Tumblr stats here via Digiday.)

Maybe the deal is about the attraction of youth. Maybe it's about mobile. It's very likely about perception and egos.

I hope this deal is about re-thinking how advertising works on the web.

Because Yahoo already has traffic. It has plenty of content. Plenty of ad units.

What's unique about Tumblr has been its insistence on advertising playing by the same rules as everyone else who creates content on its platform. As CEO David Karp put it, "You've already seen our ad unit," referring to their existing content structure.

In other words, the Tumblr ad model suggests ideas and participation are more important than interruption. If your brand is interesting, people engage. You've got to have more in the game than just money.

Within Tumblr, an ad is more than just a unit. There's a philosophy of content at work.

Sure, this approach hasn't been wildly successful. But $13M worth of ad revenue in Q1 of this year isn't zero. The question might be: Can Yahoo scale a different approach for brand awareness on the web, based on Tumblr's laboratory?

With luck, this deal might kickstart an era of valuing (engaged) awareness on the web over mere clicks.