Mashable kept it short and sweet at its NewFront presentation, held yesterday in midtown Manhattan. Mashable has pushed heavily into video over the last couple of years, and the company boasted that, for the first time ever, its video content is now being visited more often than its print content. (The slew of print journalists that Mashable laid off in April 2016 might have a thing or two to say about those developments.) Mashable’s biggest new announcement was the launch of Mashable Reels, a new vertical video product and content series for the mobile web. (It’s not an app, CEO Pete Cashmore was sure to clarify.) Mashable Reels, similar in appearance to Snapchat and Instagram Stories, includes a mix of video, photos, text, and other media. The first three Reels are focused on HBO’s Game of Thrones, the planet Mars, and Wonder Woman. McDonald’s and Sprint are on-board as advertisers.
One consistent theme of the presentation was that Mashable views itself as a mobile-first company – and that TV isn’t its focus. A year or two ago, that direction would have seemed like a no-brainer. But in 2017, connected-TV devices have pervaded the market. In a post-presentation conversation with Cynopsis Digital, CEO Pete Cashmore clarified that Mashable is indeed active across numerous platforms other than mobile, and has connected TV apps for platforms including Roku and Apple TV. But, Cashmore affirmed, mobile comes first – and Mashable has no intention of competing on a mass level with TV production giants. Instead, he said, the company is interested in using data to target audience segments on a more precise level. “The first screen we think about is the mobile screen,” he said. “We will think about set-top boxes, we will think about linear, but it’s not where we’re going to make most of our bets. We’re not going to be a TV production company in five years.”
