• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 21, 2016

Rather than squeeze another live-video service into an already crowded marketplace, Tumblr is launched support of Live Video with YouNow, YouTube, Kanvas and Upclose.

“As our peers invest in live video, we want Tumblr to serve as the best publishing and discovery platform for the content … no matter where it’s created,” a company spokesman said on Tuesday.

For the Yahoo unit, the effort should produce “compelling opportunities to bring more content and audiences to Tumblr,” he said.

Additionally, Tumblr is working with an array of media partners and organizations to live stream content and events, including MTV, Mashable, The Huffington Post, Refinery29 and Time Out.

How do brands get on board?

“Live Video is currently an editorial initiative, but we are actively exploring ways to bring live video to brand partners as an ad offering,” the Tumblr spokeswoman said.

Publishers’ Tumblr followers will now get a push notification when they go they live stream video, or when they re-blog a live video. The push notification will direct them right to the live video.

For publishers, video will also be pinned in first position at the top of their followers’ dashboards on Web and mobile while live. A badge will accompany every live video post to identify its provider. When users click-through the badge on mobile, it will open their app or take them to the app store to install the app.

If a user chooses to save the replay of their video on the live video provider app, the live video will live on their Tumblr as a regular video post that can be replayed shortly after the live video session concludes.

YouNow, a “live social network,” presently boasts over 100 million user sessions a month, and live-streams 50,000 hours of new video content every day.

Enabling real-time conversations through broadcasting live videos, Upclose claims more than 100,000 active users from more than 10 countries, including Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Merging live video streaming with real-time editing, Kanvas specializes in real time filters, gif stickers, painting and animated effects.

Despite the promise of video, Tumblr’s fortunes look highly uncertain at the moment.

“A big factor is that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are more successful at catering to mobile audiences,” eMarketer analyst Oscar Orozco noted in a recent report. The research firm suspected that Tumblr’s usership is already plateauing, and this 2016 mark its last year of double-digit growth.

Of course, it’s not the only social network with slowing user growth, but Tumblr is a fraction of the size of its rivals. Indeed, its reach among Web users is only 8.7% -- far below the 69.9% who use social networks in general, eMarketer noted.

Put another way, Tumblr will have 23.2 million domestic users this year -- less than half as many as Pinterest’s 54.6 million, and less than one-third as many as Instagram’s 89.4 million.

Worse yet, the gap between Tumblr and its competitors is only expected to widen through 2020.

Over the next four years, Tumblr is on track to add a measly 6.2 million users. By contrast, Instagram is set to add 26.9 million users, Facebook will add 14.6 million, and Pinterest will add 12 million.

It’s not for lack of trying.

“Tumblr is pushing for new ways of sharing content on its platform, including video, messaging and GIFs -- hoping to increase mobile engagement,” Orozco noted.

Despite these efforts, however, Tumblr’s woes are not helping Yahoo’s broader outlook. This year, eMarketer expects that Yahoo will capture 1.3% of total U.S. digital ad spending -- a slight decrease from last year.