Publishers Can Turn to Ecommerce

Publishers and media companies facing AI-fueled disruptions to traffic and revenue may find new revenue opportunities in retail.

If you believe the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, sometimes “the impediment to action advances action.” Or as author Ryan Holiday put it in his 2014 bestseller, “The Obstacle Is the Way.”

Holiday argues that individuals can transform every trial into an advantage through disciplined perception, action, and will. Applied to companies, it is about finding opportunities in every business challenge.

Traffic Disruption

Hopefully, Holiday and Aurelius are right, because media companies are facing a pretty big challenge right now.

AI-generated search summaries and chat are reducing the number of visitors to publishers’ websites. Reports from the Pew Research Center, Ahrefs, Search Engine Land, and various academic sources suggest that search engine traffic to publisher websites has dropped by 50% or more due to the presence of AI Overviews alone.

That is a lot of lost revenue. Most publishers earn revenue from impression-based advertising. For example, a news site might earn up to $80 per 1,000 sessions. A drop in search engine traffic leads to fewer sessions and, in turn, a corresponding drop in revenue.

Commerce Opportunity

It has always been more than a little scary for any business to be dependent on Google or other search engines for revenue. So the precipitous drop in organic traffic might be an opportunity for revenue diversification.

Publishers are well positioned for retailing for at least three reasons.

• Audience. Media companies already have an audience. Many publishers have extensive email lists and user profiles. This is likely to include demographic and behavioral data.

• Content engine. Online publishers are also expert at getting attention with their content.

• Promotional machinery. Finally, advertising drives most media businesses. Publishers and broadcasters can drive significant promotional attention.

This combination of audience, content, and advertising capability offers at least three possible business models for media companies.

• Affiliate listings that earn commissions when shoppers buy.
• Indirect ecommerce sales, such as hosting an ecommerce marketplace (not far conceptually from classified ads) or negotiating commerce partnerships.
• Direct ecommerce selling physical products akin to a retailer.

Of these, ecommerce may be the best opportunity. Turning publishing into commerce is more than installing a shopping cart. The new business needs an ecommerce operating system that is different from selling ads and writing articles.

Recommended

Why Search Rankings Are Driving Less Traffic

March 4, 2025

Commerce Operations

Borrowing from our own David Sasson’s “The Elements of a (Successful) Ecommerce Strategy,” a media company’s ecommerce operating system should comprise three interconnected parts: research, strategy, and execution.

Research identifies the opportunity before the publisher commits substantial capital or organizational attention. It should examine what the audience buys, the problems those purchases solve, which product categories align with the publication’s authority, how competitive those markets are, and whether the likely economics can support a retail business.

Strategy converts the research into choices. A publisher-turned-merchant must decide its customers, tactics, and capabilities. It must also select the appropriate business model, whether affiliate commerce, a marketplace, dropshipping, direct retail, proprietary products, or some combination.

Execution turns those choices into a business and tests whether the assumptions were correct. This stage includes selecting suppliers, building the ecommerce experience, creating product content, establishing fulfillment and service processes, and launching promotions through the publisher’s existing channels. It also requires financial and operational discipline.

Familiar Techniques

The particulars of this ecommerce operating system do not have to be invented from scratch.

Leaders at media companies can use familiar business frameworks to shape each part.

• Jobs-to-Be-Done can help define what the audience is trying to accomplish.
• Porter’s Five Forces can assess the attractiveness of a product category.
• VRIO (Value, Rarity, Imitability, Organization) can test whether the publisher’s audience, data, content, or expertise represents a meaningful advantage.
• Richard Rumelt’s strategy kernel can turn those findings into a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and a set of coordinated actions.
• Unit economics can determine whether orders and customers are actually profitable.
• A concise scoreboard or a set of objectives and results can align execution with the strategy.

AI search may be the obstacle to traditional publishing success, but it can also force media companies to recognize the value they already possess.

Obtaining audience relationships, editorial authority, customer data, and promotional reach are difficult and expensive for any new retailer. Publishers have those components already.