It started out as a tech news site for social media aficionados. But, after last year’s pivot including a staff restructure and a new focus on video production, Mashable now finds itself with a new story to tell.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, founder and CEO Pete Cashmore calls Mashable “a global media company for superfans” – and he is ready to offer those fans up to advertisers.
Speaking ahead of the Digital Content NewFronts, where he pitched the offering to ad buyers and announced new products to help them, Cashmore said: “Web culture is the centre of our culture now. A superfan is someone in entertainment, culture or technology who is just obsessed and wants to go deep in to their topic.”
At NewFronts, Mashable unveiled:
- Kilogram, a tool to help advertisers locate segments of influential Mashable readers both on and off the site.
- Mashable Reels, a mobile video segment for its mobile site that comes in vertical format.
- Video production partnerships with Crackle, National Geographic and Wattpad.
And Cashmore says Mashable is now doing more video views than views of text articles, having struck an earlier production deal with Turner.
“Mobile is the primary device for video consumption going forward, so we’ve got to make it in formats for the device,” he says of Reels, whose first sponsors are McDonald’s and Sprint.
Whilst consumers nowadays see through social media campaigns executed by paid celebrities on behalf of brands, Mashable’s founder says it is super-sharing super-fans who can really drive impactful online conversation.
“(With Kilogram), we can measure who came back after that share,” Cashmore adds. “We can re-find those people everywhere else.”
Kilogram is a refinement of Mashable’s Velocity analytics tool that first went online in 2013 and can predict video virality.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.
