Owners of The Verge eye Asia Pacific expansion while Mashable mulls Singapore office
Vox Media is looking at launching in the Asia Pacific region, while technology website Mashable is plotting its move into South East Asia after launching in Australia last year.
Speaking on a panel looking at the business models of digital media brands at SXSW overnight VP of marketing for Vox Jonathan Hunt, which owns brands including tech publication The Verge and Polygon, confirmed it was looking at global expansion towards the end of this year.
He said: “Vox Media is interesting as internationalisation is important to our expansion strategy, so right now we’re doing 125m unique viewers focussed on the US only, but there’s a big portion of that coming from international.
Martinet and Hunt speaking at SXSW
“What you’ll see is towards the end of 2015 and in 2016 in earnest you’ll begin to see us expand into APAC and EMEA.”
Speaking to Mumbrella after the session Hunt said it was more likely the UK would be its first market for expansion, but anticipated the Asia Pacific region would follow in 2016.
Mashable’s chief marketing officer Stacy Martinet said on the panel globalisation was “extremely important” to the brand this year, adding it was looking to expand into South East Asia following its launch in Australia late last year, hiring Jenni Ryall as editor.
Martinet told Mumbrella the expansion it was “likely” to be Singapore where the new office was based, after launching Mashable in India in February.
Alex Hayes in Austin
