Poshmark announced a new paid-ad feature called Promoted Closet, which is in beta testing. The move toward offering more ads on Poshmark is no surprise after Naver acquired the ecommerce platform last year for $1.2 billion. At the time Poshmark said it would leverage Naver’s advertising capabilities to drive further monetization.
According to Monday’s announcement, sellers who participate in the beta testing in the US will have an opportunity to try the tool for free and provide feedback.
Similar to ads offered on other marketplaces, paid ads give sellers an opportunity to boost their visibility in an attempt to get more sales, but it also means sellers who don’t advertise may get decreased visibility – or at least have to compete with ads.
“This beta program is a part of our ongoing efforts to empower sellers with more tools to make sales and grow their businesses,” Poshmark wrote. “With Promoted Closet, your listings will become eligible for promotion in prominent locations across search results and brand pages and you’ll be able to see how well your promoted listings are doing with access to performance insights.”
The beta test will first roll out to “Posh Ambassador IIs” located in the US who use Poshmark on desktop to manage their closet. Eventually Poshmark will make Paid Closets available to all sellers, writing on the Poshmark blog, “Our goal is to make this available to as many sellers as quickly as possible; however, we will not sacrifice quality for speed. It is our intention to build a tool that every seller can benefit from and we recognize that it will take time to test and improve.”
Boycott the promoted listings feature before it turns into the same fiasco mess that eBay has. I hope everyone declines to use that feature but I guess that would be asking to much. It is just another money grab leaving its’ sellers in the dust.