Publishers’ newest revenue scheme: monetised gift guides

Skimlinks manages e-commerce for publishers including Gawker, IGN and Business Insider. Across its 2,000 larger publisher clients, users spent an average of US$132 amount this past Black Friday, up from $104 in 2014, and three times the average transaction size for all of October. That’s gone up because publishers have put an increased focus on gift guides and monetising content in general, said Alicia Navarro, Skimlinks co-founder.

“2015 was an extraordinary year; normally editorial content sites don’t do anything that special for Black Friday, and their revenues via affiliate reflect this,” she said.

One publisher that’s increased its e-commerce focus is Business Insider. It launched a small effort last fall and now has a two-person team that writes commerce-related posts under the “Insider Picks” banner, said Rich Kennedy, senior vp of business development there.

After commerce-related revenue “exceeded” expectations last year (though he wouldn’t quantify it), Kennedy said BI plans to publish at least 25 commerce-enabled gift guides this season, across a range of different price- or category-related themes, like this one for low-cost tech gifts.

Read the full article here

Source: Digiday

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