Something I've been tracking for a while is the intersection of content and e-commerce. More and more, traditional media sites and magazines are entering the world of e-commerce, while more and more e-tailers are offering content that's very similar to what could be found in fashion magazines.
Case in point: An article in The Wall Street Journal earlier this summer discussed Lockerz, a youth-targeted media website that offers points to its 16 million registered users for watching videos with ads, taking surveys, signing up friends and completing other social networking tasks. Last month it launched a shopping component that lets users redeem those points, called PTZ, for discounts in its own online mall on brands such as Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co.
Print magazines are also finding ways to make a profit on the goods they feature — and to supplement online advertising, whose growth has slowed.
The Wall Street Journal article, for example, cited Entertainment Weekly, Lucky, GQ, Vogue, Seventeen and Cosmopolitan as consumer magazines that have launched applications for the iPhone or iPad that allow people to buy clothes, jewelry and other items featured in the magazines. Some of the publications share revenue from the items sold.
Other sites mentioned in the article as being firmly entrenched in the content/commerce space are Groupon and the Gilt Groupe. Groupon offers subscribers daily deals for restaurants and services, accompanying each offer with lengthy descriptions and reviews to cut into a local advertising market once dominated by city magazines such as Time Out. Gilt Groupe is a fashion "flash sale" shopping site that has built a following by having the sort of editorial content shoppers normally expect from fashion magazines.
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