Earlier this month Mail.ru Group and AliExpress Russia achieved yet another step in their e-commerce integration plans with the launch of Multimarket. This single interface allows merchants to manage their sales simultaneously via the AliExpress Russia site and Mail.Ru’s properties — including social networks VK and Odnoklassniki, and classifieds platform Youla.
Registered merchants can place products a VK community, a group in Odnoklassniki, a store on AliExpress and/or a profile on Youla. Thus, Multimarket provides access to a total aggregated audience of some 170 million users monthly.
Advertising functions will be added in the future. While campaigns on VK can already be launched, stopped, and edited from Multimarket, it will be possible to do so on all four platforms, says Mail.ru Group. Campaigns will be managed “both manually or using an automated system which will auto select relevant bids depending on goals and target audience.” Merchants will “no longer have to fiddle with settings and calculate budgets for each platform individually.”
Under plans, multiplatform payments and deliveries will also be made possible in the future through Multimarket.
The move comes as part of the e-commerce alliance of the two groups inked in 2019. Their respective online sales activities have not been fully merged, however: for example, the VK marketplace still operates directly with merchants.
