We have recently focused here on how many media companies are refocusing on the core products and revenue models that, setting aside the fact that they are often now primarily digital, are pretty similar to what they have been doing for decades: basically selling quality content and building direct audiences. That has largely been in response to two factors: tech firms have gobbled up most of the digital advertising and the platforms they control have proved unreliable for finding and monetising audiences.
There are however some areas where media businesses have extended beyond the core business of selling content and advertising space, and continue to see good returns. One of those is eCommerce.
Much of that market is focused around specialist titles but general news providers have also been seeing real success. The all-digital Independent – the UK’s sixth largest news site with 19.7mn users – operates one of the most successful eCommerce operations, IndyBest. The 2022 revenues of what may be the best-known affiliate domains among UK news publishers, accounted for 10% of the Independent’s £46mn total. They grew by 44% and – with video – helped to push advertising to less than 50% of total revenue for the first time. Total eCommerce staffing is up to 26 (8% of the Indy total) from 20 in 2022.
You can see from the SnapShot of Independent financials (below) that its estimated £4-5mn of eCommerce revenue must be a significant driver of the news brand’s profitability.
With a team of writers producing reviews, guides and other product-focused output, the core business is, of course, affiliate links. But it also licenses IndyBest stamps of approval to product makers who perform well in the team’s rankings. It’s a real priority for The Independent whose CEO Christian Broughton has said: “When people first say ‘affiliates’, what comes to mind, particularly for people who aren’t directly involved in that side of the business, is quite a lazy assumption that we’ve got some lifestyle content, we’ll just throw in a few links, people buy off the page and hey, some money comes in. That doesn’t do justice to the level, breadth and scale of the opportunity and the level of expertise and the commitment you need.”
It’s built on a set of fundamentals that haven’t changed a great deal over the years, but what has changed is where the audience comes from, says Holly Hathaway, the Independent’s eCommerce Director: “Broadly the big changes that have come and the approaches that will have had to change are based on where the traffic is coming from. Big changes driven by the duopoly of Meta and Google, where in certain instances publishers would have been able to attract a lot of interested audiences via Facebook news for example and those pictures.”
“Technically I wouldn’t say there has been much change on the publisher side. In the affiliate space generally, there’s continued innovation and there are a lot of suppliers out there offering tools which can make publisher and user journeys more efficient, and that’s all great. When it comes to publishers creating written content, it doesn’t it doesn’t get much more complicated than writing a fantastic article with your reader in mind, with links.”
One obvious response to those changes in where audiences are coming from is boosting internal referrals and direct channels, and something many media brands have got better at is integrating eCommerce content with the wider brand’s output. Hathaway highlights the recent example of the Independent’s relationships columnist writing reviews of dating apps which provided an opportunity for the Indy Best team. As well as email newsletters, they have also recently launched a WhatsApp channel to feed users with a regular flow of content from the team.
But while referrals and direct traffic from channels such as emails and WhatsApp groups can help drive people to eCommerce content and create purchases in people not already looking for something to buy, the business remains heavily built around those looking for advice about buying something they already know they need – and that means SEO.
A good SEO ranking can still make all the difference, and it’s something Indy Best has been doing particularly well. But, as with so much of the media business, AI looks set to be disruptive.
“It will clearly take away traffic from our website by answering those questions there and then,” says Hathaway. “The world is changing quickly and customer behaviour will soon follow as these things start rolling out, but another piece of the revenue pie is at risk. We are watching and analysing the roll-out generally in the UK and we’ll be speaking to industry experts and making sure that we are consulted as much as possible.
“What every publisher would like is the credit we deserve for the AI-generated content. For example, I ran a test yesterday on Chat GPT. I searched for the best electric toothbrushes on there and it returned a result actually crediting the Independent and linking out to our articles.
“For any of the big companies who are testing AI, it’s fundamental to our industry that we’re given that credit and whether it’s disclaiming which publisher the information was sourced from – and ideally a link as well.”
One way the Independent is attempting to bring in new readers who may suit its eCommerce content is through the tie-up announced last month with the UK arm of BuzzFeed’s brands, including the core outlet, HuffPost and social focused brands Tasty and Seasoned. The idea is to provide advertisers with a way to buy across the different outlets, and that should also provide opportunities for the eCommerce operation.
“They bring a really exciting piece to us which is their excellence and social media sphere. For me personally, it will be exploring how we can learn from those publishers and how we all work together to diversify our eCommerce strategies. So those brands can expand a bit more into SEO and the Independent can expand a bit more in social,” says Hathaway.
“The bit that’s really exciting within all this is the power of video. The Independent has independent TV and that has been going incredibly well when it comes to readers finding us on YouTube and on our site. But we think there’s some really exciting collaboration work that could be done with the likes of our creators over at Tasty UK where they’re really specialized in creating videos for social in a vertical format.”
The challenges for eCommerce are unsurprisingly closely linked to those for the broader industry including reliance on third-party platforms for traffic, and competition from other sales drivers that don’t rely on professional content production to make money. But the encouraging thing about eCommerce success such as Indy Best’s – and, indeed, continued investment in eCommerce operations at many other publishers – is that it’s an example where media outlets in many countries are on the offensive, using their expertise to take a piece of another industry’s pie, rather than simply trying to protect the one they have.
| The Independent £mn SnapShot | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| Revenue | 46.3 | 41.2 | 30.3 | 27.0 |
| UK | 63% | 57% | 50% | 54% |
| N. America | 19% | 19% | 33% | 33% |
| RoW | 18% | 24% | 17% | 13% |
| Op profit | 1.9 | 5.5 | 2.7 | 2.3 |
| Margin | 4% | 13% | 9% | 9% |
| Headcount | 304 | 244 | 214 | 196 |
