How ecommerce is enriching media owner’s revenue streams
Kerstin Schiefelbein, digital director at Burda International gave an overview of the company’s ecommerce strategy today at FIPP’s Innovation Forum in London.
Citing the Forrester statistic that by 2016, 44 per cent of total retail sales will be influenced by online content, Schiefelbein said: “Online shoppers have more choice and more information at their fingertips than ever before,” which shows why media owners are beginning to operate in this space.
“As a publisher, we want to increase reach, engagement and time spent with our brands,” said Schiefelbein, “but commerce sites want to speed up period of discovery, checkout and sale, and minimise the time spent on content. They’re optimised on speeding up and focussing on engagement as much as necessary but not as much as possible. The key to future commercial success here lies in ability to conduct business on terms that consumers find meaningful on a personal level.”
So how is Burda doing this? Integrating ‘eshops’ into its brands using a technology which enables the creation of a first-access point for consumers to purchase.
“We give retailers a home in our brands and our editors are able to access the products and create content out of them,” said Schiefelbein, “but we don’t ask our editors to sell the products, but instead create engagement and interest.”
Aside from pure online ecommerce, Burda is integrating ecommerce into events, with one example being sending fashion brand subscribers discounts to events at local shops. “We collect data from the engagement here, which is important for creating new offers and learning about the behaviour of user transactions,” said Schiefelbein.
