Dive Brief:
- Mashable is mashing up two very different slices of marketing – native advertising and e-commerce – with its new Mashable Shop.
- The e-commerce outlet launches Cyber Monday and is sponsored by Visa and uses the Visa Checkout payment system.
- The shop will stay open until 2016, and according to the online publisher is more of a branding move than a bid for e-commerce revenue.
Dive Insight:
Mashable Shop opens for business today and the e-commerce outlet is a bit different than most in that it doubles as native advertising for Visa. The online store will carry products from Visa partner brands as well as products from Mashable’s Collective division and some tech products from Kickstarter. The store will stay open until 2016.
Mashable CMO Stacy Martinet told Ad Age, "For us this is more of a brand play than a revenue play. We are not looking at this as an e-commerce play."
The native advertising aspect of Mashable Store is that visitors must use Visa Checkout to complete purchases.
"It's an evolution of the marketing, advertising and commerce capabilities coming together. That's exciting because I think it's a good leading indicator of what you'll see a lot of folks in the space do," Sam Shrauger, Visa senior VP-digital solutions, told Ad Age.