With 2 Million Users, Fashion App Pose Introduces Advertising

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By Lauren Indvik2013-07-29 12:31:20 UTC

It's been two and a half years since Pose first launched on the iPhone, going on to expand to new platforms, including the web, iPad and Android. Having recently passed the 2 million registered users mark, Pose is now getting serious about turning its app into a real business.

On Monday, Pose launched an ad campaign with Juicy Couture Fragrances to promote its Viva La Juicy Noir fragrance (see image below). The ads aren't typical banner display units, fixed to the top or bottom of the app: Instead, they're modified takes on the app's standard "pose" and appear in-stream with poses uploaded by regular users. Users can "love" and "save" the ads just as they can with other poses.

Ads appear in the second pose slot, and at an interval of every 12 poses after that.

SEE ALSO: How Pose Became the Instagram of Fashion

This is the second in-streaming advertising campaign Pose has brought to its platform, following an initial campaign with eBay Fashion that debuted last month. That ad featured a collage of eBay merchandise and a prompt to install eBay Fashion's app (see screenshot below). Prior to that, the company experimented with other kinds of promotions with Disney and Gap's Intermix, among others.

In an interview at Mashable's offices earlier this month, Dustin Rosen, CEO and founder of Pose, said the company waited to get into advertising because it wanted to develop an ad unit that could be just as interesting as the poses that surround it. "Banner ads were not something we wanted to do," he explained. "We wanted to build [ads] into the stream, to make them more integrated and actionable." With 2 million signups, Pose is now also at a scale to appeal to advertisers, he added.

By moving into advertising, Pose is well positioned to capture a slice of the small but rapidly growing mobile ad market. The app has little competition in the fashion and beauty niches, and it certainly doesn't hurt that one potential competitor, fashion advice app Go Try It On, recently folded.

Looking ahead, Rosen said he wants to offer advertisers targeting capabilities. A denim company could, for example, target ads to users who have loved or saved a pair of competitor's jeans to their favorite poses file. Geolocation presents another option for companies that want to target consumers that live in certain urban markets or near its stores.

Pose, which is headquartered in L.A., now has 14 employees, and recently hired its first ad sales associate in New York. Rosen says Pose has already sold a number of other in-stream ads for the back-to-school season in August and September. The startup last raised funding two years ago and Rosen says that while he's focused on improving the product and growing revenue, he's "always open to those conversations."

To date, Pose has not invested any money in advertising itself, focusing instead on bringing bloggers to its platform, who often bring their readers with them.

Topics: Advertising, Business, pose, Startups