What Is Content Commerce?

Updated: Dec 20, 2021

Content or commerce?

For publishers and brands, the answer is both. Consumers are being bombarded with ads, influencers, and dodgy search results. As a result, there is a greater need for sources of truth for product information before hitting the checkout.

Consumers want to educate themselves about what they should purchase. In an environment where every product category has dozens of highly-rated options to choose from, they have to do their research to find the best product that matches their needs. Education delivered in the customer journey through content — social media walkthroughs, customer case studies, or SEO-powered product pages — is one of the keys to driving more revenue.  

On the other side of the equation, consumers want frictionless purchase options for products. A 2021 study showed that nearly 1 in 5 shoppers abandoned their cart because of a long or complicated checkout process. 

The symbiotic relationship between content and commerce has created a new business model for publishers and a new distribution channel for brands: content commerce.

What is content commerce?

Content commerce is the strategic integration of relevant products and media to deliver differentiated shopping experiences for consumers.

For example, let’s say you’re checking out The Fascination’s Holiday Gift Guide. You scroll through the list and notice The Apex watch from Vincero. You think it’ll be a great gift for your dad, just in time for the holidays.

You click through and land on The Fascination’s product page for the watch. A couple of clicks later and you’ve placed your order. 

That’s content commerce in action. It reduces the friction between content and commerce, creating seamless purchase experiences that benefit consumers, publishers, and brands. 

Content commerce is just one application of the Operating System for B2B Trade that we talk a lot about at Convictional, and we think it’ll become even more relevant as publishers become ecommerce businesses.

Examples of content commerce

Content commerce can happen through two modes:

1. Native checkout
2. Affiliate links

Native checkout

With native checkout, customers can purchase products within a piece of content. Products are embedded directly in the content and customers can complete the checkout flow without navigating away from the page. 

Bustle does a great job of providing native checkout options to its readers. This recent holiday gifting article recommends several products that are under $30. Readers can read about these gift ideas in the article, view products on the page, and checkout instantly — they don’t have to navigate away to the retailer’s website. 

Affiliate links

Affiliate links are a more common method that publishers use in their content commerce strategy. Publishers use them to link products out to retailer websites in exchange for an affiliate commission. A 2021 Digiday survey revealed that over 60% of publishers use affiliate links in their content commerce strategy.

Content commerce: native checkout vs affiliate marketing

Publishers often think that their content commerce strategy is complete by using affiliate links. However, there are several problems with affiliate links. The conversion rates are poor (relative to ecommerce industry standards) because of the friction-filled customer experience. The brands that opt to be in generic affiliate networks are typically undifferentiated — what’s stopping a brand that opts in to one affiliate network to be part of another? Curation goes out the window when you pursue affiliate links. Lastly, you don’t retain the consumer.

For brands (synonymous with the term vendors), native checkout represents a new form of product distribution. It’s a sales channel that they can leverage to generate revenue without having to rely exclusively on-site traffic or paid acquisition. It has the same incentives as using affiliate links, except brands are empowering the publisher to own the checkout experience in favor of higher conversion rates. By pursuing a native checkout strategy, brands can finally let publishers show their products in the best light possible.

How media brands can execute a content commerce strategy

What does the ideal content commerce relationship look like between brands and publishers?

It starts with the publisher recognizing the need to diversify their ad-centric revenue model and invest in a native commerce experience. What this looks like in practice is a multi vendor marketplace or curated dropship marketplace. On the front end, this looks familiar to consumers. It’s a catalog of highly curated products with rich product information. On the back end, it’s an interconnected network of integrations syncing data between the storefront and hundreds or thousands of vendors.

A network of this size can be difficult to manage, especially for supplier onboarding and coordination. Convictional makes it easy for publishers to manage their supplier integrations so that they can focus on providing quality context experiences to their audiences. 

Once a publisher decides to invest in launching a multi-vendor marketplace, they should then consider factors like a Rules of Business document that sets expectations between the vendors and the publisher. That should spell out how you will handle returns, customer support, refunds, and billing.

Publishers can set expectations with vendors with Convictional’s Agreement Action Template. They can upload their vendor agreement in the template and send it to vendors to collect e-signatures as part of their onboarding process in Convictional.

From there, the publisher will need to determine the most efficient way to continuously sync inventory, product, and order information with all of their vendors in the most automated method possible. It’s insufficient to automate the operations on the publisher’s side; at this stage, you will want to also automate the operations for the vendors too.

Automating all operations on both sides of the relationship reduces the risk of human error, saves time, and ultimately makes it easier to do business. Suppliers on Convictional have told us they love automated invoicing and payouts. Our integration with Stripe ensures that suppliers are paid for each order in real time and publishers don’t have to spend time each month tallying invoices and sending them out. 

Power your content commerce strategy with Convictional

Content commerce is here to stay, and it’s just the beginning. Publishers should consider how they can capitalize on the opportunity ahead by curating a community of brand partners and offering a native commerce experience on their websites.

Get a head start on curating your brand partners with Convictional. We’re a supplier enablement platform that makes it easy for you to get your multi vendor marketplace up and running. Contact our sales team today to get started.